This week, the doctors and staff of the Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists bring you the facts behind some brand new important research. The scientists who conducted the research found a strong link between childhood asthma and adult COPD.
Doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) conducted meticulous, long-term research over several years, using 684 patients.
The Asthma Patients In The Latest Research Study 
They found the patients in the Childhood Asthma Management Program (CAMP.) The study began with the children ranging from 5-12 years in age, and lasted until all of them were at least 23 years old.
From the very beginning of the study, the doctors knew they were in search of the secrets of how early lung function related to lung growth and health in adulthood.
The Method of Finding the Link Between Asthma and COPD
Each of the young patients reported every year “to one of eight research centers around the U.S. and Canada.” They were given tests to demonstrate their lung development and capacity.
As you might expect, spirometry readings were among the important measurements carefully recorded on each patient. (As FLASS doctors have noted previously on this blog, spirometry tests show how much air a patient can exhale within a single second.)
The patients were not only suffering from asthma, but from persistent childhood asthma. They had trouble “breathing on an almost daily basis.” Contrary to these cases, “most childhood asthma resolves with time.”
However, twenty percent of the children with persistent asthma will develop severe symptoms in adulthood. As the doctors followed the yearly examinations of the 684 children and their tests, they discovered a connection between persistent childhood asthma and another respiratory disease: COPD.
The New England Journal of Medicine published their results just this week. The doctors concluded that “early lung function predicts lung growth later in life…”
Scott T. Weiss, MD, is one of the paper’s senior authors and Co-Director of the Systems Genetics and Genomics Section of the BWH Channing Division of Network Medicine. He stated, “This work tells us that persistent childhood asthma can develop into COPD, something that up until now has not been well described.”
He went on to explain details and discoveries within the study:
1. Children who had low lung function at the start of the trial endured reduced lung growth.
2. Due to the yearly exams, the researchers could predict the growth and development patterns in asthmatic lungs.
3. By the end of the study, 11 percent of the patients met the criteria for COPD.
4. The scientists also noted that the male patients seemed to be more often stricken than the female. However, this would need to be given more study before conclusions could be drawn.
5. Co-senior author Robert C. Strunk stated, “For people barely into adulthood to already have COPD is terrible.
As the COPD evolves, they are likely to have health problems that will make it difficult to participate in normal day-to-day responsibilities such as holding a job.”
The FLASS Take-Away For Patients, Parents and Friends
Here at FLASS, we have published this story about this research in order to encourage parents and physicians “to identify at-risk children.”
Such children should be taught to take preventative measures to avoid, or at least delay, the bad bond between persistent asthma and COPD.
You should also know that children with only mild asthma were not found to be at an increased level of risk.
Unbelievable as it seems, statistics now prove children who suffer from severe, persistent asthma are nearly 32 times more likely to develop COPD in adulthood.
Now that we have a solid foundation of knowledge available from studies like this one, the Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists stress the importance of discouraging certain risky behaviors in children with persistent asthma.
It is vital that young patients understand smoking and exposure to environmental pollutants could intensify asthma symptoms, and might multiply their COPD risk. Now that we know this bad bond between these two diseases exists, we can take steps to break it!
