Relationship between Obesity and Allergic Diseases among Schoolchildren in Mongolia

Background: Atopic diseases including asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic eczema are major illnesses among the children. The prevalence of asthma and obesity has increased substantially during the last several decades in many countries. Due to their increasing prevalence, both obesity and asthma were recognized as a major public health issue in the worldwide. A very few studies have been done to reveal the prevalence of allergic disease in Mongolia. Most of them are not directly used ISAAC and not available in the literature.
Aims: Try to determine prevalence of allergic disease among Mongolian school-age children as well as to assess association between obesity and prevalence of the allergic disease.
Methods: We used the Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) core written questionnaire to examine the prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases. We conducted a cross sectional survey of schoolchildren in public schools located in the Ulaanbaatar city, parents or guardians of children aged 6-7 years completed written questionnaires about symptoms of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, eczema and several risk factors such as birth weight, monthly income and the child’s height and weight. Adolescents aged 13-14 years self completed the questionnaires on these symptoms and reported their own height and weight. Additionally the height and weight was objectively measured by investigators. BMI of individuals is using as a determination of the obesity and it was classified into quartile based on BMI for age percentile.
Results: The prevalence of the asthma among in this population was a 5.89%. Of the individual allergic diseases, rhinitis is 28.6%, 9.42% conjunctivitis, 5.53% eczema respectively. The prevalence of allergic disease particularly asthma and rhinitis were high observed in male among 6-7 years age children, controversy less among 13-14 years old children. According to the BMI results 9.15% of all participants had obesity and 14.06% had an overweight in total sample. Obese and overweight children both had significant higher likelihoods of asthma compared to normal weight children in female gender for both age groups. But interestingly in obese and overweight children had significant higher odds of rhinitis for male gender in both age groups (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The survey results revealed that asthma and allergic diseases are distributed in Mongolian children, and this can be interpreted that allergic diseases are expected to increase in the future. Multidimensional effort by individuals, community, national health program, preventive strategy and implementation plans are can be reduce the risk of the asthma and allergic disease.