Relationship between asthma and obesity in children

Introduction: Asthma is the most common chronic disease of children in world. Nearly 90% of that occurs in childhood that is indicating the role of internal and external factors of asthma in childhood or before birth. Asthma is a airways chronic inflammatory disease that is identified by dyspnea, wheezing, night cough, chronic cough and chest pain symptoms. On the other hand, obesity as a body physical composition disorder, which is defined as the relative or absolute increases of fat tissue of body, is disorders that depend on many factors and has been identified as a risk factor for asthma. The purpose of this study is assessing of relationship between asthma and obesity in children. Methods: This was a descriptive-comparative study on 280 asthmatic children that admitted to Boali hospital at Ardebil. The check list was composed of demographic status and BMI. The data were analyzed by SPSS and descriptive analysis, chi-square and Pearson correlation. Results: This study showed that most of children with asthma, 123(43.9%), were obese and 98(34.5%) had overweight. Also the result of the chi-square test (P=0.001) and Pearson correlation (r=0.91) indicate that there was significant positive statistic relationship between obesity and asthma in this patients. Conclusion: Considering resulting of this study that there was strong relationship between obesity and asthma, nursing care in asthmatic children should be based on family centered care for enhancing these children and their parent’s knowledge and self-efficacy to prevent and control obesity and other asthma risk factors