Preterm Birth and Childhood Wheezing Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Jasper Been and colleagues investigate the association between preterm birth and the development of wheezing disorders in childhood. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Lung function after extremely preterm birth—A population‐based cohort study (EXPRESS)

“…[38][39][40] There is however, still a lack of knowledge about the prevalence and magnitude of chronic respiratory morbidity after extremely preterm birth. We find it deeply concerning that asthma-like disease was very prevalent among children born extremely preterm and that up to half of the children born at 22-24 weeks of gestation exhibited a lung function below the lower limits of normal.…”

The impact of respiratory viruses on lung health after preterm birth

“…Complications of prematurity underlie more than half of all neonatal deaths worldwide, such that over one million infants die each year due to complications of preterm birth [1]. For those who survive the neonatal period, many face a lifetime of ongoing health problems with a substantially increased risk of significant respiratory morbidity that persists through life [2–4]. The risk and severity of lifelong morbidity and mortality are accentuated by the level of prematurity [5,6], birth weight [6] and the presence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) [7].…”

Lung Function at 8 and 16 Years After Moderate-to-Late Preterm Birth: A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Quality control was performed at the time of examination by visual inspection of the waveforms. Given that coherence, which is a measure of testing reliability, was >0.80 at 10 Hz, the mean value of resistance at 5 Hz (R 5 ), resistance at 20 Hz (R 20 ), frequency dependence of resistance (ie, R [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], and reactance area (AX) were used for analysis. AX may boost the assessed response inappropriately compared with the R 5-20 response because it multiplies 2 partly independent reactions of the airways.…”

“…3,4 Available studies on moderate to late prematurity in relation to airway obstruction in infants and toddlers report increased respiratory morbidity during early childhood. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Few studies are available on lung function at school age and adolescence in this group, however, and the results are somewhat conflicting. 12,13 Furthermore, although spirometry is a well-established method to assess lung function by measuring expiratory flow rates and volumes, other lung function techniques aiming to assess peripheral airway function and mechanics, such as forced oscillation, have been shown to be more sensitive than spirometry for detection of airway obstruction in children with lung disease, including follow-up studies of children born very preterm.…”