Losing a significant amount of weight can reduce the risk of asthma attacks, a new study shows.
A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has shown that significant weight loss achieved through bariatric surgery may reduce the risk of asthma attacks in obese patients. This was the first time a study has conclusively shown that losing weight can be a pragmatic way to reduce asthma symptoms. Previous studies focusing on non-surgical weight loss strategies have had inconclusive results, but also involved less weight loss than bariatric surgery patients experience.
"Although previous studies of non-surgical weight loss interventions failed to show consistent results regarding asthma risks, our result strongly suggests that the kind of significant weight loss that often results from bariatric surgery can reduce adverse asthma events," wrote the study's lead author, Dr. Kohei Hasegawa of the MGH Department of Emergency Medicine.
For this study, the researchers used databases that display anonymized information on the use of health services in California, Florida and Nebraska. They were able to identify 2,261 obese patients who had undergone bariatric surgery between 2007 and 2009, then looked at their individual rates of hospitalization before and after surgery.
They found that in the two years before undergoing surgery, 22 percent of patients had been to the emergency room at least once as a result of asthma symptoms. During the two years after surgery, on the other hand, only 11 percent were hospitalized.
One limitation of the study is that it did not show exactly how much weight was lost by each patient, but according to Hasegawa, bariatric surgery patients tend to lose around 35 percent of their presurgical weight.
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