Longitudinal analysis of a four-year follow up of pulmonary function development in children with a past history of asthma

Abstract

In order to longitudinally study the pulmonary function development of children with a history of asthma, we measured the flow-volume curves of 441 fourth-grade children in seven primary schools randomly selected from the Kashima district in Ibaraki prefecture in 1980, and again in 1982 and 1984. Levels and slopes of pulmonary function indices for individual children were calculated in 325 children who performed acceptable forced expiratory maneuvers at all of the three surveys. In FVC and FEV1, no significant difference of levels and slopes was observed between children with asthmatic history and control children. However, the level and slope of V25 of children with asthmatic history were significantly lower than those of control children (0.5 l/sec for the level, 0.08 l/sec for the slope) even when only those who did not suffer from wheezing attack during the follow-up period were concerned. These results suggested that the functional change of peripheral airways in children with asthmatic history did not recover within a couple of years even when they were in remission. Moreover, the functional differences between those two groups of children might become larger in early adolescence.