Comments on impact of obesity on bronchial asthma in the Indian population.

Sir,

I read the original article, “Impact of obesity on bronchial asthma in Indian population,” published in lung India,[1] with great interest. I have also contributed to this issue earlier through a review article published in Lung India.[2]

Even as I appreciate the efforts of the authors in conducting this study on this important issue, I have my reservations on certain aspects of this study.

The number of patients in the study is too small

The control (non-obese asthma) patients should have been age- and sex-matched with those in the study (obese with asthma) group. This is essential for any meaningful comparison, more so when the number of patients in the study are too few, as is the case in this study. This has not been done, as is clear from Table 1 of the study

The student's t test is not applicable to compare the means of the highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels in the two groups of this study, as the degree of variation from the means is too large in both the groups. One can expect a significant difference in the means of the hs-CRP values in the two groups, if reanalysis of the data is done using non-parametric tests. This is expected to change the conclusion drawn by the authors.

I hope the authors will take these issues in the best interest of science and respond for the benefit of the readers of this esteemed journal.