Virtual International Pediatric Pulmonary Network (VIPPN)

Editor's Choice, October 2018

Teresa Bandeira, MD, PhD

Prevention and control of rising asthma prevalence requires knowledge of potential controllable causes. Obesity is also increasing in prevalence and there’s evidence of parallel increase in both asthma and obesity. Tsai et al, published in the Annals ATS, data from the Boston Birth Cohort, at a mean age of 7.3 years-old, highlighting the relationship between early life weight gain and overweight and increased risk of asthma, as clinically defined by the clinician1.

This paper motivated a letter to the editor by Bui et al, with data supporting previous findings but also recommending some caution and further subgroup analysis before issuing strict recommendations2.

  1. Tsai HJ, Wang G, Hong X, Yao TC, Ji Y, Radovick S, Ji H, Cheng TL, Wang X. Early Life Weight Gain and Development of Childhood Asthma in a Prospective Birth Cohort. Ann Am Thorac Soc 2018. [epub ahead of print, doi: www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201712-921OC]
  2. Dinh S. Bui, Jennifer L. Perret, Caroline J. Lodge. The Differential Influence of Early Life Weight Gain on Asthma-Risk in Later Childhood. ANNALSATS Articles in Press. Published on 13-September-2018 as 10.1513/AnnalsATS.201808-523LE