NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adults with asthma use more health care resources than adults without asthma, a new study from Canada confirms, and inactivity and obesity are contributing factors for the increased utilization of health care among asthmatics.

Regardless of body weight, having to stay in the hospital overnight was much more common among inactive asthmatic patients, whereas higher body weight and physical inactivity were both important predictors of increased health care use.

The findings are based on a survey of 6,835 adults with asthma and 78,051 adults without asthma. Shilpa Dogra, of York University, Toronto, and colleagues limited their analyses to adults 20 to 64 years of age without COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

Asthmatic patients, the researchers found, were 2.25 times more likely to have an overnight hospital stay, 1.48 times more likely to have four or more overnight hospital stays and 2.43 times more likely to have three or more physician consultations, compared with non-asthmatic patients.

Sedentary patients with asthma were 1.68 times more likely to have an overnight hospital stay and 1.23 times more likely to have three or more physician consultations, compared with physically active patients with asthma.

Inactive, obese patients with asthma, the study team reports, were 2.35 times more likely to have an overnight hospital stay and 2.76 times more likely to have three or more physician consultations, as compared to active, normal weight patients with asthma.

The study appears in the latest issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

In a prepared statement, Ms. Dogra said: "The most important thing to take from this study is that asthmatics, whether obese or normal weight, can benefit greatly from adopting and maintaining an active lifestyle."

"Higher activity levels not only help the individual with asthma, but also have the potential to relieve some of the burden being placed on the healthcare system," she added.

SOURCE: Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, June 2009.