Childhood adiposity predicts adult onset asthma in females: a 25 year prospective study

¹ Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
² Respiratory Research Group, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
³ Cancer Council of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
⁴ Dept of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: j.burgess{at}pgrad.unimelb.edu.au.

	Abstract

Few data exist on associations between childhood adiposity and incident asthma in later life. We examined the relationship between childhood body mass index (BMI) and incident asthma beginning in adolescence or in adult life.

Subjects were participants in the Tasmanian Asthma Survey, a large population based cohort study, who were asthma-free by age seven years. Weight, height and lung function were measured at age seven years. Asthma status at ages seven and 32 years was ascertained by questionnaire. Odds ratios were calculated for the association between childhood adiposity expressed as "overweight" or as BMI z-score quartiles at age seven years and asthma beginning after that age.

In females, but not males, there was a significant association between adiposity at age seven years and current asthma at age 32 years that began after age 21 years. The association was not explained by childhood lung function or age at menarche. There was no association between adiposity at age seven years and asthma that developed after that age and remitted by age 32 years in either sex.

Higher BMI in non-asthmatic girls at age seven years predicts risk of current asthma beginning in adult life.

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