%0 Journal Article %A Ru-Ling Hsiao %A Li-Ling Yang %A Teng-Hui Huang %A Tsu-Yu Yuan %A Tsu-Nai Wang %T The associations between the adult asthma, central obesity and gene polymorphisms and activities of superoxide dismutase and catalase %D 2011 %J European Respiratory Journal %P p998 %V 38 %N Suppl 55 %X Background: Adult asthma is caused by interaction effects of genetic and environmental factors. Previous studies have indicated that obesity may increase the risk asthma. Therefore, our study objectives were to investigate the association between asthma and the polymorphisms of SOD or CAT, especially in central obesity.Materials and methods: A case-control study was performed to recruit 250 asthmatic adults from a hospital and 250 age and sex-matched controls who were free from symptoms of asthma, COPD, TB, and chronic bronchitis by self-report. All subjects completed a questionnaire, waist and hip circumference measurement and lung function test were performed. Central obesity was defined as waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) >0.95 for males and >0.85 for females. We also analyzed genotyping of SOD gene Ala16Val and CAT gene C-262T.Result: In our study, we did not find any significant association between the SOD Ala16Val and CAT C-262T and asthma. The WHR of asthmatic patients was significantly higher than the controls. The activities of SOD and CAT in new onset asthma patients were significantly different from control subjects (p<0.01). Compared with non-obesity and SOD AG/GG genotype, we found that the AOR value for obesity and SOD GG genotype is 2.68 (95%CI, 1.30-5.55).Conclusion: The activities of SOD and CAT are significantly related to adult asthma but not for central obesity. This would enable us to further investigate the mechanism of defective antioxidant enzymes for asthma pathogenesis. %U