Associations between asthma and body weight misconceptions among South Korean adolescents: Nationwide cross-section study

Abstract

Objectives: As the numbers of adolescents with asthma are increasing, appropriate recognition of the importance of body weight is necessary. This study explored body weight misconceptions and related factors in adolescent asthma patients. Methods: Web-based self-reported data from the Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey of 60,974 physician-diagnosed adolescents with asthma were used in this study. Self-reported questionnaires were employed to assess socioeconomic status, health behavior, and psychological factors. Multiple logistic regression after adjustment for confounding factors was used to explore body weight misconception. Results: A total of 28,771 (47.2%) respondents incorrectly classified their weight status, with 13,684 (22.5%) under-assessing and 15,087 (24.7%) over-assessing their weight. Body weight misconceptions were positively associated with middle school attendance (odds ratio [OR] 1.02, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02-1.06), co-educational school attendance (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.01-1.11), living without parents (OR 1.11, 95% CI 1.03-1.19), self-rated poor health status (OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.00-1.10), self-rated unhappiness (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09-1.20), moderate-to-severe stress (OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.11-1.18), depressive mood (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.06-1.14), suicidal ideation (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.04-1.13), and suicide attempts (OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.05-1.21); negatively associated with male gender (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.83-0.89) and higher level academic achievement (OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.88-0.96), respectively. Conclusion: Negative psychological factors and school type were found to be associated with body weight misconceptions in adolescents with asthma. Our study shows that more efforts are needed to improve such misconceptions and to develop healthy behaviors in adolescents with asthma.