Adult respiratory health is significantly influenced by early life exposures and childhood respiratory illnesses. In as ideal world, we would have baseline lung function measurements on everyone at the time of lung maturity so that these baseline values could be used to determine the trajectory of lung diseases experienced in adulthood. This symposium will explore the importance of prenatal and early childhood exposures to environmental factors including airborne pollutants (automobile and diesel exhaust, cigarette smoke), viral infections on lung disease such as asthma, small airways disease, and COPD in adulthood. We will explore the lifelong trajectory of diseases with early life onset such as Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell disease and the consequences of premature birth and bronchopulmonary dysplasia on adult lung disease including pulmonary hypertension and COPD.
• Review recent advances in our understanding of how premature birth affects lung development and predisposes the individual to childhood and adult diseases such as asthma, COPD, and pulmonary hypertension
• Understand how early life exposures to airborne pollutants, allergens, cigarette smoke, and particulate matter from wild fires affects lung development and predisposes the individual to childhood and adult diseases such as asthma and COPD
• Highlight the areas of research needed to reduce the impact of early life exposures disease on respiratory health in children and adults
Meilan Han, MD, MS, ATSF
Benjamin Kopp, MD, MPH, ATSF
Kara Goss, MD
Lisa Young, MD, ATSF
Jennifer Taylor-Cousar, MD, MSc, ATSF
Erick Forno, MD, MPH, ATSF
The Children Are Not OK: Reframing Our Approach to Lung Health and Lung Disease
Tough Transitions: Sickle Cell Lung Disease Through the Ages
Perinatal Pulmonary Vascular Insults: How Prematurity Primes the Pump for Pulmonary Hypertension
Childhood Interstitial Lung Disease: Coming of Age
The Changing Face of Cystic Fibrosis (CF)
Implications of Early Life Environmental Exposures to Adult Obstructive Lung Disease