Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is commonplace affecting 10% of adults and causing 3 million deaths/year worldwide. It is characterised by poor lung function (airway narrowing), that is difficult to improve and is viewed as a disease of older smokers. However recent research reveals that several factors may influence lung function developmental patterns (trajectories) from early life towards COPD.
In our Isle of Wight Birth Cohort (IOWBC) at 26-years we showed that young adult asthmatics at 26-years experienced poorer adolescent lung growth, young adult smokers had faster declining lung function in adulthood while asthmatic smokers showed worst lung function suggesting particular risk for early COPD. Indeed several lung function trajectories are now described which might be associated with COPD. Confirmation of such associations is needed and best achieved using research cohorts studied across the lifetime.
We will identify lung function trajectories using measurements in the IOWBC to age 32-33 and a sample of 1500 subjects in ALSPAC-30 with the goal of identifying early evidence of COPD and what drives that. We will further characterise IOWBC participants using more detailed lung function tests, imaging (CT scans), and samples obtained directly from their airways using techniques called induced sputum and bronchoscopy to identify COPD features. They will also provide blood samples to assess relevance of gene/environment interactions to COPD-risk (epigenetics). We will test these IOWBC COPD-risk findings on a proportion of ALSPAC-30 subjects who will also undergo further lung function tests and imaging to see how generalisable they are to other populations. We will use existing ALSPAC-30 epigenome characterisation to further corroborate IOWBC findings.