The effect of obesity on lung function

By U. Peters, A. Dixon. Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine, 2018

735 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT Introduction: There is a major epidemic of obesity, and many obese patients suffer with respiratory symptoms and disease. The overall impact of obesity on lung function is multifactorial, related to mechanical and inflammatory aspects of obesity. Areas covered: Obesity causes substantial changes to the mechanics of the lungs and chest wall, and these mechanical changes cause asthma and asthma-like symptoms such as dyspnea, wheeze, and airway hyperresponsiveness. Excess adiposity is also associated with increased production of inflammatory cytokines and immune cells that may also lead to disease. This article reviews the literature addressing the relationship between obesity and lung function, and studies addressing how the mechanical and inflammatory effects of obesity might lead to changes in lung mechanics and pulmonary function in obese adults and children. Expert commentary: Obesity has significant effects on respiratory function, which contribute significantly to the burden of respiratory disease. These mechanical effects are not readily quantified with conventional pulmonary function testing and measurement of body mass index. Changes in mediators produced by adipose tissue likely also contribute to altered lung function, though as of yet this is poorly understood.

Subfields: Endocrine and Autonomic Systems, Physiology, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4611d11e3788a915b710f9279c8aa4a6b575f430

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1. Qingxian Cai
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8. Qing He

Citations in the corpus

• High Prevalence of Obesity in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) Requiring Invasive Mechanical Ventilation (2020, background): “Moreover, abdominal obesity is associated with impaired ventilation of the base of the lungs, resulting in reduced oxygen saturation of blood (6).”
• Obesity and COVID-19 Severity in a Designated Hospital in Shenzhen, China (2020, background): “Obese patients allocate a disproportionately high percentage of total body oxygen consumption to their respiratorywork, leading toa reduction in functional residual capacity and expiratory volume (24,25).”