Association between excess weight and asthma in adolescents of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Methods Cross-sectional study with students ages 10-14 years of public schools of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State (RJ). For asthma diagnosis was used the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood(ISAAC) questionnaire. The classification of nutritional status was obtained by the Z-scores of Body Mass Index (BMI) for age. It was considered overweight (OW) values ≥ Zscore> +1 and obesity Z-score> +2. Chi-square test, prevalence ratio and their respective confidence intervals of 95% were used to evaluate the association between the prevalence of asthma ("wheezing in the last 12 months”) and nutritional categories of EW. Then, we used logistic regression to study these associations adjusted for sociodemographics of the sample. Differences between the BMI and the presence of asthma were analyzed by Student’s t-test. The adopted level of significance was 5%.