Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Childhood obesity and asthma have increased dramatically in Canada in the past 3 decades. Not surprisingly, obesity and asthma each have huge direct and indirect costs on the national healthcare system. It is accepted that obesity and asthma are linked, with recent research suggesting that obesity may precede asthma. Although this relationship is not fully understood, we know that asthma is more common in pre-pubertal boys, but in girls from puberty onward. Thus, we believe that sex hormones and psychosocial factors, both of which are known to influence puberty, influence this association. Using data from the CIHR-funded 1995 Manitoba Birth Cohort, the proposed study will consider various ways in which obesity and asthma may be linked. This will be achieved through two aims: 1) to characterize the temporal association between weight status and subsequent incident asthma diagnosis by hormonal changes and lifestyle patterns, and 2) to describe children's experiences of living with asthma. We hypothesize that a gender-specific association exists between overweight and subsequent incident asthma. This question will be investigated from specific focal areas: gender; hormonal changes/puberty; physical activity/sedentary behaviour; and, dietary patterns. Preliminary analysis suggests that girls who were overweight at age 8-9 tend to be more likely to develop asthma at age 11-12; this association was not identified in boys. This study will also provide a "window of opportunity" for prevention of disease through knowledge translation and will further enhance our understanding of the gender-shift of asthma. Collectively, the findings will further our understanding of childhood obesity and asthma, and result in better approaches to and improved outcomes for children and their families.