Metabolic Syndrome and Incident Asthma in Chinese Adults: An Open Cohort Study.

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough metabolic syndrome is awell-known risk factor for many non-communicable diseases, its contribution to asthma remains controversial.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to explore the associations of metabolic syndrome and its components with incident asthma in Chinese adults.MethodsWe conducted an open cohort study of participants who were asthma-free at baseline (n=42,304) in the Shandong multi-center health check-up longitudinal study from 2004 to 2015. Participants aged ≥20 years and had regular physical examination (once ayear) more than three times during follow-up.ResultsNinety subjects (38 women and 52 men) developed incident asthma over 12 years of follow-up. Our study suggested that metabolic syndrome itself was not significantly associated with incident asthma in either women or men (P>0.050). Interestingly, we found that overweight and/or obesity was arisk factor for incident asthma among women but not men in the Cox proportional hazards model after adjusting covariates (adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR)= 2.940, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.467–5.894, P=0.002). The result was consistent with the Poisson regression model (hazard ratio (HR)= 2.241, 95% CI: 1.135–4.988, P=0.026). After stratifying according to overweight and/or obesity, we found that female subjects with overweight and obesity were associated with the occurrence of incident asthma (P<0.050). However, we did not find this result among men. ConclusionMetabolic syndrome was not significantly associated with incident asthma in both women and men; however, overweight and/or obesity was shown to be asignificant risk factor for incident asthma but only in women, not in men.