New Mexico News
| Drugs Can Help Control Obese Women’S Asthma |
| Posted by Peter Phipps (pphipps) on Jun 10 2008 at 8:10 PM |
Obesity appears to put women at higher risk for asthma, suggesting that weight loss and certain drugs could help control the disease, a University of New Mexico researcher has announced.
The research also suggests that female sex hormones appear to play a key role in the onset of asthma in pre-menopausal women, UNM physician Akshay Sood said.
Sood, lead author of the study, presented the findings recently at the American Thoracic Society’s 2008 conference in Toronto.
“I think (the findings) may open new ways of preventing and treating asthma in pre-menopausal women,” Sood said in a phone interview.
The research suggests that dieting, exercise and weight loss offer women relief from asthma, Sood said.
In addition, a class of drugs called TZDs, or thiazolidinedione, already approved for the treatment of diabetes, could offer a promising new therapy for asthma, he said.
The research centers on a protein produced in fat cells associated with asthma, diabetes and possibly other diseases.
High levels of the protein, adiponectin, appear to protect people from asthma, Sood said. But for reasons that remain little understood, obese people produce low concentrations of the protein, he said.
Both physical exercise and TZD drugs appear to help raise levels of adiponectin, Sood said.
The findings “may allow for new ways to treat asthma that have been ignored before,” Sood said. The research was published last month in the online version of the journal Thorax.
Obese men also show low levels of adiponectin but are less likely than women to develop asthma. This may be because men have a type of muscle mass that protects against the disease, Sood said.
“Our subsequent research is showing that the lean mass — the muscle mass that men have — may actually be protective in men,” he said. Those findings are not part of the research announced in Toronto.
Women also appear to be at greater risk for asthma between puberty and menopause, suggesting that female hormones play a key role in the onset of the disease in women, he said.
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