Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset

Optimal lung development during childhood and adolescence is very important for health and disease throughout life. According to new results published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, individual lung function development during childhood is plastic, and may include phases of relative improvement (catch-up) and worsening (growth failure). Suboptimal lung development with failure to achieve normal peak lung function in early adulthood is associated with a higher prevalence and an earlier incidence of respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases, as well as premature death.

– Our study contributes to the concept that at the group level, lung function levels are rather stable over time, but also shows that at the individual level, lung function development may be plastic, including catch-up and growth failure, says senior author, professor Erik Melén.

In the present study, researchers used data from birth up to age 24 years from the Swedish population-based birth cohort BAMSE (Swedish abbreviation for Child (Barn), Allergy, Milieu, Stockholm, Epidemiological), which includes 4,089 participants from the Stockholm area recruited 1994-96.