Grant: CIHR-ICRH Travel Awards - General pool

Obese kids with asthma are more severe and harder to treat. We wanted to find out if obese kids with mild asthma have different patterns in their genes expression compared to kids with severe asthma. We looked at whether these gene patterns were influenced by age, sex, and body weight. When we looked at these genes in kids with severe asthma, kids with lower body weight had pathways related to purinergic receptors that were less active. Inversely, in kids with higher body weight, pathways related to DNA damage were more active, meaning that the proteins associated with these genes are being overproduced.