Overweight children more likely to have poor response to asthma inhalers

Dr Cristina Longo said: "We know that children with asthma, whose symptoms are poorly controlled, tend to gain weight."

Asthmatic children are less likely to respond to inhaled steroids if they are overweight or obese, leading to more frequent asthma attacks, a study has found.

Researchers say the data is the first to use information on genetic variants linked to body mass index (BMI) to investigate if a poor response to inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) is likely to be due to excess weight or to other factors.