Abstract
The prevalence of obesity in children has dramatically increased in the last few decades, and obesity has also emerged as an important risk factor for asthma. Innate mechanisms have been shown to be involved in both diseases, particularly through the recently described innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), in which ILC3s have been linked to obesity both in human and in murine models. The aim of this study was to explore whether being overweight in asthmatic children was associated with elevated circulating ILC3 or elevated messenger RNA (mRNA) levels of RORC, IL-17A, and IL-22. Our results showed significantly elevated ILC3 frequencies in overweight asthmatic children compared with nonoverweight controls based on the detection of Lin+CD127+IL-23R+ cells by flow cytometry. Moreover, elevated ILC3 frequencies positively correlated with the mRNA expression of RORC which has been identified as a transcription factor of ILC3s. The relative mRNA expression level of IL-17A was also upregulated in overweight compared to nonoverweight children, as was the relative mRNA level of IL-22. However, there were no correlations between ILC3 frequencies or the expressions of RORC, IL-17A, and IL-22 and asthma severity. These results suggested that childhood obesity is an independent factor that is associated with an elevated frequency of circulating ILC3s and higher expressions of RORC, IL-22, and IL-17A.
Highlights
Obesity affects adults by causing chronic diseases including arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or coronary heart disease and has emerged as an important risk factor for asthma [1,2,3]
These results suggested that childhood obesity is an independent factor that is associated with an elevated frequency of circulating ILC3s and higher expressions of RORC, IL-22, and IL-17A
The peripheral neutrophil counts in the overweight asthmatic group was significantly higher than those in the nonoverweight asthmatic group, while there were no differences in the peripheral eosinophil counts between males and females or between the overweight asthmatic and the nonoverweight asthmatic group
Summary
Obesity affects adults by causing chronic diseases including arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or coronary heart disease and has emerged as an important risk factor for asthma [1,2,3]. Asthma is a heterogeneous inflammatory disease, characterized by chronic inflammation of the airways, increased mucus production in the bronchioles, and airway hyperreactivity to various stimuli [9]. Asthma is such a common disease, and its prevalence has increased worldwide over the last decades, which estimate that asthma affects approximately 300 million individuals globally [10]. Several cell types involve in airway inflammation, adaptive immunity, and antigen-specific Th2 cells have been correlated with the severity of diseases for several decades for the production of Journal of Immunology Research
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