Preterm birth appears to up childhood risk of asthma and wheezing

by Bruce Sylvester – Children born preterm appear to have a higher risk of developing asthma and wheezing disorders, researchers report in a study published on Jan. 28, 2014 in PLOS Medicine.

The authors said that their new findings, “.. do not support prior suggestions that the association between preterm birth and wheezing disorders becomes less prominent with increasing age. Instead, the strength of the association was similar across age groups [up to 18 years], suggesting that the pulmonary consequences of preterm birth tend to persist throughout the life course.”

Jasper Been, MD, of the Maastricht University Medical Centre (Netherlands) and The University of Edinburgh (UK), and colleagues at Harvard Medical School (US) undertook a meta-analysis of data from 30 studies involving about 1.5 million children. They noted that about 11% of children are born preterm.

They reported that children born preterm (before 37 weeks of gestation) showed a  46% higher incidence of asthma or a wheezing disorder during childhood than children born at full term (≥ 37 weeks of gestation).

They also found that very preterm children (<32 weeks of gestation) showed an even greater of developing asthma or a wheezing disorder, almost triple that of children born at full term.

They estimated that if none of the subjects had been born preterm, there would have been over a 3.1% drop in ensuing childhood wheezing disorders.

The authors concluded that their new findings offered, “…compelling evidence that preterm birth—particularly very preterm birth—increases the risk of asthma. Given the projected global increases in children surviving preterm births, research now needs to focus on understanding underlying mechanisms, and then to translate these insights into the development of preventive interventions.”