Metabolic Syndrome and Incident Asthma in Chinese Adults: An Open Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Although metabolic syndrome is awell-known risk factor for many non-communicable diseases, its contribution to asthma remains controversial. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore the associations of metabolic syndrome and its components with incident asthma in Chinese adults. METHODS: We conducted an open cohort study of participants who were asthma-free at baseline (n=42,304) in the Shandong multi-center health check-up longitudinal study from 2004 to 2015. Participants aged ≥20 years and had regular physical examination (once ayear) more than three times during follow-up. RESULTS: Ninety subjects (38 women and 52 men) developed incident asthma over 12 years of follow-up. Our study suggested that metabolic syndrome itself was not significantly associated with incident asthma in either women or men (P>0.050). Interestingly, we found that overweight and/or obesity was arisk factor for incident asthma among women but not men in the Cox proportional hazards model after adjusting covariates (adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR)= 2.940, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.467–5.894, P=0.002). The result was consistent with the Poisson regression model (hazard ratio (HR)= 2.241, 95% CI: 1.135–4.988, P=0.026). After stratifying according to overweight and/or obesity, we found that female subjects with overweight and obesity were associated with the occurrence of incident asthma (P<0.050). However, we did not find this result among men. CONCLUSION: Metabolic syndrome was not significantly associated with incident asthma in both women and men; however, overweight and/or obesity was shown to be asignificant risk factor for incident asthma but only in women, not in men.