Obesity: Next game changer of allergic airway diseases?

Obesity and allergic diseases are global health concerns, both of which are seeing an increase in prevalence in recent years. Obesity has been recognised as an important comorbidity in subpopulations with allergic airway diseases, which represents a unique phenotype and endotype. Obesity-related allergic airway diseases are associated with exacerbated clinical symptom burden, altered immune response, increased disease severity and compromised predictive capability of conventional biomarkers for evaluating endotype and prognosis. Moreover, treatment of obesity-related allergic airway diseases is challenging because this unique endotype and phenotype is associated with poor response to standard therapeutic strategies. Therapeutic regimen that involves weight loss by non-surgical and surgical interventions, gut microbiome-targeted treatment, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist and other agents should be considered in this population. In this review, we outline the current knowledge of the impact of obesity on prevalence, endotypes, clinical symptom and management of allergic airway diseases. Increased understanding of the implications of obesity may contribute to better treatment options for the obesity-related refractory airway inflammation, particularly in precision medicine.

Key points

• Obesity can increase the prevalence of allergic airway diseases such as asthma, AR, and CRSwNP.

• Obesity alters the immune endotype and exacerbates clinical symptoms of respiratory allergic diseases.

• Obesity-related allergic airway diseases exhibit therapeutic resistance to standard treatment.

• Obesity-related allergic airway diseases constitute a distinct category of endotypes and phenotypes, requiring further in-depth research and novel therapeutic approaches.