International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | August 2020 | Vol 8 | Issue 8 Page 2828 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Kaur G et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2020 Aug;8(8):2828-2833 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Original Research Article Effect of obesity on lung volumes among adults Gurmeet Kaur 1 , Sandeep Kaur 2 , Geetika Gupta 3 , Rajneet Kaur 4 * INTRODUCTION Obesity is currently one of the major global epidemics and is recognized as a significant and rapidly increasing cause of morbidity and mortality. 1 It has been established to be associated with wide range of CVS, metabolic and endocrine complications but its respiratory consequences, though known since long, are under-recognized. 2 Obesity as per World Health Organization is defined as the abnormal or excessive collection of fat in the body to the extent that health is impaired. 3 Obesity is categorized according to body mass index (BMI). BMI is a crude parameter to measure obesity at population level and is calculated as weight (kgms) divided by the square of height in meters (kg/m 2 ). Obesity can profoundly alter respiratory physiology by several mechanisms, due to direct mechanical changes caused by fat deposition on the chest wall and abdomen as well as due to systemic inflammation it produces. 1 1 Department of Physiology, Govt. Medical College, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India 2 Department of Physiology, Govt. Medical College, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India 3 Department of Physiology, ASCOMS, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India 4 Department of Physiology, Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru Govt. Medical College, Chamba, Himachal Pradesh, India Received: 07 July 2020 Accepted: 13 July 2020 *Correspondence: Dr. Rajneet Kaur, E-mail: drrajneet18@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Obesity has long been recognized to have significant effect on respiratory functions. Many studies have reported exponential decrease in pulmonary function test (PFT) with increasing body mass index (BMI), which is a crude indicator of obesity. Also, the relationship between BMI and PFTs varies with age, race, geographical region and the different obesity standards used. To the best of our knowledge, not many studies have been done to examine the relationship between obesity and lung volumes among adults in our region, Jammu. This cross-sectional study was carried out with the objective of evaluating the effect of obesity on lung function test in obese but otherwise healthy adults of Jammu region. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Jammu region on subjects selected randomly from different colleges in the age group of 18-40 years. The study involved 300 subjects; divided into three groups of 100 each, based on BMI into normal, overweight and obese groups. Four respiratory parameters viz. FVC (Forced Vital Capacity), FEV1 (Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second), FEV3 (Forced Expiratory Volume in 3 seconds), and MVV (Maximum Voluntary Ventilation) were used to assess their lung functions. Results: All the respiratory parameters exhibited statistically significant decrease in obese groups as compared to normal and overweight groups. Conclusions: The present study suggests that obesity alters the respiratory physiology by producing a restrictive ventilatory pattern. Keywords: Body Mass Index, Obesity, Pulmonary function tests, Restrictive ventilation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20203094