{"id":1987,"date":"2024-12-16T09:07:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T09:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happy-liskov.74-208-176-141.plesk.page\/2024\/?post_type=story&p=1987"},"modified":"2025-01-29T22:56:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T22:56:05","slug":"asthma-study-tracking-tucsonans-from-birth-into-adulthood","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/annualreports.healthsciences.arizona.edu\/2024\/story\/asthma-study-tracking-tucsonans-from-birth-into-adulthood\/","title":{"rendered":"Asthma study tracking Tucsonans from birth into adulthood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, are potentially life-threatening lung conditions that make it difficult to breathe. Asthma can develop at any age, while COPD is usually diagnosed after age 50. Around 40 years ago, there were theories that asthma and COPD could have causes originating in early life, but they were just that \u2013 theories.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearchers asked 70 year olds with COPD if they remembered having childhood respiratory difficulties,\u201d said\u00a0Fernando D. Martinez, MD<\/b>, director of the\u00a0University of Arizona Health Sciences<\/b><\/a>\u00a0Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center<\/b><\/a>\u00a0and Regents Professor of pediatrics in the\u00a0College of Medicine \u2013 Tucson<\/b><\/a>. \u201cMany of them remembered having asthma, or being hospitalized with pneumonia, but we know a person\u2019s memory is not always reliable that far back.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1980, researchers at the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center launched a study focused on exploring the early-life origins of asthma. From 1980 to 1984, 1,246 healthy babies were enrolled into the\u00a0Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study<\/b><\/a>. Martinez joined the research team only a few years later, and researchers are still following more than 700 of those babies, who are now adults in their 40s.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(From left) Tara Carr, MD, and Fernando Martinez, MD, are dedicated to the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center\u2019s mission to understand the causes of respiratory disease, improve the lives of people suffering from these illnesses, and find cures for respiratory diseases that plague the citizens of our nation and world.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve collected data as some of them developed asthma, and we are still collecting data as some of them are now showing signs of COPD,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cThe Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study has contributed so much of what the scientific community knows about asthma. The importance of early-life influences is confirmed over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discoveries start with data\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the main functions of the lungs is to take oxygen out of the air and pass it into the bloodstream. When a person inhales, air enters the lungs and travels through a series of progressively smaller airways until reaching tiny air sacs surrounded by blood vessels. This is where oxygen from the air is diffused into the bloodstream.<\/p>\n

When a person has asthma, their airways become inflamed and sensitive to triggers such as allergens or infections. The airways tighten and fill with mucus, leading to symptoms including wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath.<\/p>\n

When a person has COPD, which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, chronic inflammation of the airways causes them to become obstructed. This is usually caused by long-term exposure to irritants such as cigarette smoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many heavy smokers who never develop COPD, and there are many people who have allergies who are not asthmatic,\u201d said Martinez, who is a member of the university\u2019s\u00a0BIO5 Institute<\/b><\/a>. \u201cWe wanted to narrow down a common thread, such as the incidence of a severe lower respiratory infection, like bronchiolitis or pneumonia, in early life.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn and observe as much as possible from this large group of infants, researchers gathered a wide variety of physiological data going all the way back to cord blood in some cases. Children were examined for conditions including bronchiolitis, pneumonia and croup, and symptoms and causes documented. In some cases, family members were also surveyed and tested.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In-depth evaluations of study participants at ages 6, 11, 16, 22, 26, 32, 36 and 40 measured their lung function. Allergy skin prick tests were taken to test for local allergens that might trigger asthma. Blood samples were collected for complete blood cell counts, DNA extraction and total immunoglobin E tests, the latter of which measure an antibody that is often more prevalent in people with allergies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beauty of how this study was designed is that it is not based on participants having any condition or disease before they were enrolled. Instead, we have a large group recruited at birth, and we just follow them over time,\u201d said\u00a0Stefano Guerra, MD, PhD, MPH<\/b>, study co-lead, director of the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center\u2019s Population Science Unit and professor in the\u00a0College of Medicine \u2013 Tucson.<\/p>\n

Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study data has been used to describe various wheezing disorders, develop an Asthma Predictive Index and evaluate many risk factors for acute respiratory tract illnesses. Other findings include day care attendance being associated with greater\u00a0immune protection<\/b><\/a>\u00a0later in childhood, children with\u00a0older siblings<\/b><\/a>\u00a0in the house having a reduced risk for asthma and frequent wheezing, and\u00a0breast feeding<\/b><\/a>\u00a0possibly protecting infants from recurrent ear infections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data collected in the Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study can be used for almost any idea or hypothesis you can think of involving lung function or any of the other variables measured,\u201d Guerra said.<\/p>\n

A generation\u2019s worth of data\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Data collected over decades is proving to be invaluable for new studies into other lung conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recently used Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study data for a study on another type of respiratory impairment called spirometric restriction, which means a person\u2019s lungs don\u2019t expand fully,\u201d Guerra said. \u201cThe\u00a0data showed<\/b><\/a>\u00a0that poor growth and nutritional deficits before birth and during childhood precede and predict the development of this condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Stefano Guerra, MD, PhD, MPH, is a leading expert in the natural history and markers of obstructive lung diseases, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tara Carr, MD<\/b>, a Professor of Medicine at the College of Medicine\u2014Tucson, sees patients in the Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Banner \u2013 University Medical Center Tucson. One of her studies examined the interconnected public health challenges of asthma and obesity. She used data from the Tucson Children’s Respiratory Study to show that higher insulin levels at age 6 resulted in a twofold higher risk of asthma occurrence.<\/p>\n

In the \u201980s,\u00a0the Tucson Children Respiratory Study collected blood samples on these young children and carefully stored the samples in deep freezers for future analysis,\u201d Carr said. \u201cThis allowed us to take those samples out and measure for insulin levels some 30 years later. We found that the higher insulin levels coincided with higher risk of asthma, even if the child wasn\u2019t overweight at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carr, who happened to be born around the same year as many of the participants, marveled at the forward thinking involved in the creation of the Tucson Children\u2019s Respiratory Study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese researchers were innovative in so many ways,\u201d she said. \u201cTo select from a pool of healthy babies from the onset, to follow up with them so regularly, to record their health outcomes at doctor visits, and to gather all these objective measurements for over 40 years is just brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Martinez, a practicing pediatric pulmonologist at Banner Health\u2019s Diamond Children\u2019s Multispecialty Services Clinic in Tucson, studying childhood influences on health always seemed intuitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a saying that where the twig is bent, so inclined is the tree,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea is the earlier the tree bends, the more it is going to curve in that direction as it grows.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2122,"parent":0,"template":"","college":[],"uahs_theme":[15],"class_list":["post-1987","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","uahs_theme-creating-defenses-against-disease"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAsthma study tracking Tucsonans from birth into adulthood - University of Arizona Health Sciences Annual Impact Report 2024<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/annualreports.healthsciences.arizona.edu\/2024\/story\/asthma-study-tracking-tucsonans-from-birth-into-adulthood\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Asthma study tracking Tucsonans from birth into adulthood - University of Arizona Health Sciences Annual Impact Report 2024\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, are potentially life-threatening lung conditions that make it difficult to breathe. 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