Early-childhood asthma symptoms up COPD risk in adulthood

The risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) doubles among people who had asthma-like symptoms during childhood, reports a recent study.

The study included 3,290 mother-children pairs who had undergone examinations during pregnancy and when the child was aged 1, 3, and 6 years. The primary outcome was COPD defined from data registries or lung function measures, which was completed by 930 cohort participants at around 50 years of age.

Of the 3,290 children participants, 25.1 percent (n=825) had asthma-like symptoms during the first 6 years of life. Most of such symptoms (61.5 percent) were only detected during one test; only 9.9 percent had asthma symptoms all throughout the three examinations.

A history of asthma-like symptoms during childhood almost doubled the likelihood of being hospitalized with a COPD diagnosis (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.88, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.32–2.68). A similar effect was used for the outcome of using any asthma or COPD control medication (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.71, 95 percent CI, 1.35–2.17).

Asthma-like symptoms also showed a dose-response relationship with COPD risk, such that kids displaying symptoms at all three early-life examinations saw the highest COPD risk in adulthood.

Moreover, asthma-like symptoms during childhood also increased the risk of a hospital diagnosis of asthma (aHR, 2.11, 95 percent CI, 1.45–3.08), COPD without asthma (aHR, 1.64, 95 percent CI, 1.05–2.55), and both COPD and asthma (aHR, 2.75, 95 percent CI, 1.52–4.98) after age 30 years.