Pathophysiology to Phenotype in the Asthma of Obesity

Obesity affects numerous diseases, including asthma, for reasons that remain incompletely understood. Recent research suggests that the asthma of obesity is not a single disease, and that it breaks out into at least two distinct phenotypes. One phenotype is conventional allergic asthma modulated by obesity, whereas another arises solely due to the presence of obesity. The latter is postulated to be a consequence of the chronic lung compression caused by the obese chest wall in individuals with particularly collapsible lungs. Allergic obese asthma, on the other hand, appears to result from the way that obesity affects the immune system, which we hypothesize can be understood in terms of effects on the dynamic regulation of the inflammatory response.