Childhood smoking and birth weight may impact the risk of developing COPD later in life.
- COPD is a chronic respiratory disease.
- Children with low birth weight are at greater risk of developing it.
- Juvenile smoking, before the age of 15, also increases the risk, regardless of smoking status in adulthood.
Between 3 and 3.5 million people suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This chronic respiratory disease is “characterized by permanent and progressive obstruction of the airways”as recalled by High Authority of Health. Two studies have identified risk factors, detectable from childhood.
Low birth weight increases the risk of COPD later
The first research, published in BMJ Open Respiratory Researchdemonstrates a link between birth weight and the risk of developing COPD later in life. Its authors, scientists from the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China, based their work on data from more than 250,000 people. They found that participants with the lowest birth weight had a higher risk of COPD. “Additionally, there were interactions between age, passive smoking and maternal smoking.they note.
COPD: smoking before the age of 15 increases the risk
A second study, carried out by researchers from different American universities, looked at youth smoking. It was published in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases. Its authors took as their starting point the results of previous research: it had demonstrated that COPD was more widespread among adults who started smoking before the age of 15 than among those who started after, regardless of their current smoking status and lifetime cigarette consumption. The team took the analysis further to examine the links between early smoking, COPD and other risk factors.
“Our study suggests that a person with a history of smoking in childhood has an increased risk of developing COPD, independent of their current smoking status, duration of smoking, and exposure to passive smoking.“, concludes Laura M. Paulin, pulmonologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in the United States, and lead author of this work. She recalls that important stages of lung development occur during childhood and early adolescence, “making children’s lungs particularly susceptible to damage from smoking.”.
