A study carried out using mice may hold the key to explaining why more obese people suffer from asthma. The research revealed that the hormone, leptin, is responsible for regulating the diameter of the airway – asthma is a chronic lung condition caused by inflammation of the airways and obesity is known to cause narrowing of the airways.
The study also concluded that medication that works through the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of the body that regulates leptin function, could relieve the symptoms of asthma in the obese.
The research team at Columbia University set out to discover if both obesity and anorexia led to asthma, suspecting that the fat cells could affect the lungs. Leptin, which affects fertility, energy metabolism and bone mass, is a protein made by fat cells.
Using mice, they found evidence that abnormally high or low body weight and fat causes the airways to narrow, known as bronchoconstriction, and lessens lung function. They also demonstrated that leptin can increase the diameter of the airways. If you’re obese and have asthma, bronchoconstriction can make the condition worse.
The Columbia results, published online in the journal Cell Metabolism, also included two experiments to test their findings on leptin on possible asthma therapy. In one they found that infusing leptin into the brains of mice with lung inflammation kept the diameter of the airways and lung function at normal levels.
The second experiment tested drugs that reduce parasympathetic signalling and demonstrated that medication could successfully treat asthma that is caused by body weight.
The study concluded that obese-related asthma could possibly be treated by medication that is already on the market and used in particular for pulmonary disease. However, no drugs can be prescribed until more clinical trials into weight-associated asthma are carried out.
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