Obesity may be particularly important for severe asthma because more than 75% of individuals visiting the emergency room for asthma are obese or overweight (13).We have recently reported that innate airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) was observed in mice that were obese as a result of a genetic deficiency in leptin, a satiety hormone (ob/ob mice) (14, 15); in mice obese because of a genetic deficien