NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For people with asthma,those who are obese are nearly five times more likely than theirnon-obese peers to be hospitalized for asthma, new researchindicates.

The findings come from a study of 1113 members of a healthcareorganization who were at least 35 years of age and had activeasthma.

In examining the impact of obesity on asthma outcomes, Dr. DavidM. Mosen from Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Oregon, and colleaguesadjusted for a number of factors known to affect such outcomes,including smoking, oral steroid medication, and gastric refluxdisease.

Compared with normal weight subjects, obese individuals were 2.7times more likely to have poor asthma control, and 4.6 times morelikely to have a history of asthma-related hospitalization, Mosen’steam reports in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.