Longitudinal association of adiposity with wheezing and atopy at 22 years: the 1993 Birth Cohort, Pelotas, Brazil.

Purpose: Asthma is a highly prevalent noncommunicable lung disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the longitudinal association of obesity/adiposity with wheezing and atopy.

Methods: The population of the study was composed of participants from the 1993 Pelotas (Brazil) Birth Cohort. The following outcome variables were measured at 22 years: wheezing in the last 12 months, wheezing with atopy, wheezing without atopy, only atopy, and persistent wheezing at 18 and 22 years. Exposure variables were obesity body mass index, percent fat mass (FM), and fat mass index, which were obtained by precise methods (BOD POD and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry [DXA]). Crude and adjusted logistic and multinomial logistic regressions were used in the analyses.

Results: The prevalence of wheezing (with and without atopy), wheezing without atopy, only atopy, and persistent wheezing were 10.6%, 3.9%, 30.9%, and 4.0%, respectively. To be obese or to belong to the highest tertile of obesity/adiposity at two follow-ups showed a cumulative and positive association with wheezing in the adjusted analysis; for atopy there was no significant association. The odds ratio (OR) for wheezing according to the percentage of total FM measured by DXA in the highest tertile at both follow-ups was 1.58 (95% CI: 1.14-2.20) against an OR of 1.16 (95% CI: 0.92-1.47) for atopy. Persistent wheezing was also associated with adiposity, but without statistical significance.

Conclusions: We found a positive longitudinal association between several measures of adiposity and wheezing at 22 years old. The effect was higher for cumulative adiposity; the results for atopy were not consistent.