Asthma and Metabolic Syndrome?

Happy June to everyone!

There was a recent release of an article in the journal Inflammation that was trying to see if the Metabolic Syndrome was a risk factor for asthma. The term "metabolic syndrome" is thrown around a lot, but it is a clustering of impaired glucose tolerance with obesity, high cholesterol, and hypertension (need 2 of these 3). Scientists have put forth pretty good evidence that obesity is a state of chronic, low-grade inflammation and it would not be surprising that this may in fact play a role in another common inflammatory disease, asthma. The study looked a cohort of post-menopausal women with and without asthma and then looked at various metabolic parameters. Interestingly, they found that those women with asthma had higher indices of insulin resistance, but did not find that link between asthma and obesity. That being said, causation is difficult to prove. They also found higher levels of certain inflammatory cytokines and adipokines in the asthma patients compared to their controls. A problem here is that it may be a bit like the chicken or the egg. Are patients with asthma more sedentary and therefore develop obesity/metabolic syndrome/more inflammation, or is the obesity related inflammation actually causing the asthma? I think those are great questions that warrant future research.