Elucidating mechanisms of chronic airway disease; a life-course approach

Lung development starts in utero and continues during childhood, and can be altered by several host and environmental factors during the life-course.

A range of lung function trajectories exist in the population and sub-normal trajectories are associated with several health outcomes, including respiratory (such as asthma and COPD) and cardiovascular disease.Here we propose that lung function charts could be used both for children and adults to monitor lung health status across the life-course.

To this end, we have recently introduced our freely available online “Lung Function Tracker” tool.Going forward, we hypothesize in this project thatlung function trajectory modelling and long-term risk prediction of chronic airway disease be improved by incorporating individual-level clinical, lifestyle and environmental expsure data in the modelsSystemic biomarkers measured early in life provide prognostic values for long-term disease risk up to adulthoodGenetics and upper airway methylation and gene expression data will give insight into mechanisms related to onset and progression of chronic airway diseaseThe expected outcomes of the project are 1) a new prediction tool that reliably may predict long-term individual lung function trajectory and asthma/COPD risk; 2) exploration of new mechanisms of airway disease and identification of novel targets for early disease detection and 3) key genes and pathways for impaired lung function and asthma/pre-COPD will be identified.