What factors lead to chronic respiratory disease? Researchers investigated this question using health data from about 780 infants. Their analysis shows that children's risk of developing asthma later in life can be more reliably predicted by observing the dynamic development of symptoms during the first year of life. About one in ten children suffers from asthma .
Genetic predisposition, passive smoking, high levels of air pollution and infections are only a few of the risk factors for this chronic illness. Each factor has only a small influence on its own. It is their interplay that makes asthma more likely, according to the hypothesis of an international research committee, of which Professor Urs Frey of the University of Basel and the University Children's Hospital Basel is a member.
Together with Dr. Uri Nahum from his team and international colleagues, Frey investigated how the interaction of these factors during the course of the first year of life affected children's developing respiratory systems. The analysis was based on health data from two cohorts, amounting to around 780 healthy infants born in various European countries.
The research team reports on the results in the journal The Lancet Digital Health . A new way of looking at chronic illness For both cohorts, the researchers calculated the network of interactions between a range of known risk factors for every week of each child's life, and then compared these with the appearance of symptoms such as coughing or.
