Assessment of peak expiratory flow rate in relationship with anthropometric parameters in male and female medical students

Background: Peak Expiratory Flow Rate is influenced by various factors such as sex, racial, body surface area, posture, obesity, physical activity, geography and climate. PEFR measurement is a simple, convenient, and more reliable method to evaluate the pulmonary functions. In one or two decades, obesity was found to be life threatening non communicable disease predisposing to health hazards in children, adolescence and young adults. Aims: This study was therefore designed to measure the PEFR in male and female medical students and to explore the association between PEFR and selected anthropometric variables such as height, weight and BMI among them. Material and Methods: This Cross sectional study consists of 118 medical students from GCRG Institute of medical sciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. We excluded Smokers, students who were doing regular exercises, History of cardiac or pulmonary diseases. Results: There were a gender difference in all the anthropometric parameters and PEFR. The mean height, weight and PEFR were observed to be significantly higher among male students than the female students, while mean values of BMI were higher in the female students and were not significantly difference between the genders. Conclusions: The present study showed that PEFR have strong positive correlation with height and weight. Our finding revealed that PEFR increases along with increase in height and Weight. It can be concluded that PEFR is affected variably by variation in BMI.