Strengths, Pitfalls, and Lessons from Longitudinal Childhood Asthma Cohorts of Children Followed Up into Adult Life.

Andrew Tai

doi:10.1155/2016/2694060

Abstract

Asthma is a common problem worldwide and longitudinal studies of children followed up into adult life enable the assessment of clinical outcomes, examine the pattern of lung function outcomes, and importantly provide insight into aetiology and prognosis for patients with asthma. The aim of this review is to examine the major childhood asthma cohort studies which have continued into adult life, describing the strengths and weaknesses and the lessons that can be learnt regarding pathophysiology and potential future directions for research.

Highlights

Asthma is one of the commonest conditions affecting the worldwide community
Lung growth occurs in children to young adult life and suboptimal growth may be potentially impacted by childhood diseases such as asthma and premature gestation
Following maximal lung growth, there is a decline that occurs in adult life and this decline may be accelerated by insults such as smoking

Summary

Introduction

Monitoring the long-term patterns of childhood asthma into adult life has provided important information on clinical outcomes, highlighted lung function trends over time, enabled investigations into the aetiology and pathophysiology of asthma, measured treatment responses, and, importantly, provided prognostic information for families and their children. In the last 2 decades, there have been few prospective community studies which have explored the long-term outcome of childhood asthma into adult life. This review will focus on five specific longitudinal cohorts which have followed up children with asthma prospectively from childhood to varying ages of adult life (Table 1). These specific cohorts have longitudinal clinical data and lung function measurements which enables a thorough comparison in order to establish key outcomes, learning points, and future research concepts. This review will highlight clinical factors that determine the persistence of asthma from childhood into adult life and examine the lung function trends from childhood to adult life and the potential impact of disease such as asthma and the interaction with smoking

Melbourne Asthma Cohort

Tucson Children’s Respiratory Study

Tasmania Asthma Study

British National Child Development Study

Findings

Lessons to Be Learnt from the Cohort Studies