| "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Boys who are obese and whose mothers smoked during pregnancy appear to have an increased risk of wheezing. However, these associations were not seen among girls, according to the findings of a Brazilian study." ""Public health strategies aimed at minimizing the burden of wheezing should take these sex differences into account," write Dr. Ana M. B. Menezes of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas and her colleagues." "Prior studies have suggested a different prevalence of asthma in boys than in girls. To further investigate, Menezes and her team examined risk factors for wheeze among 4,452 boys and girls who were 11 years old." "Overall, nearly 44 percent of the study participants said they had experienced "wheezing or whistling in the chest" at least once during their lifetime. A total 13.5 percent of the study participants said they had experienced at least one such episode during the past year." "Obese 11-year-old boys, however, were 38-percent more likely to report current wheezing than nonobese boys, Menezes and her team report in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Obese girls were 26-percent more likely to report wheezing than nonobese girls, but this difference was not statistically significant." "Boys with mothers who smoked during pregnancy were 36-percent more likely to wheeze compared with boys whose mother's did not smoke while pregnant. In contrast,
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