Grant: Project Grant

Asthma affects over 339 million people worldwide and 14% of Canadian children, making it the most common chronic disease in childhood. It is a leading cause of hospitalizations and costs the Canadian healthcare system over $2 billion per year. Asthma is difficult to diagnose in young children due to variable and fluctuating symptoms, and the lack of standardized tests. These challenges result in delayed diagnosis, which hinders the study of risk factors for early-onset lung disease. We address this by including quantitative assessments of lung health such as repeated measures of lung function from infancy throughout early childhood from the Canadian CHILD Cohort Study. Longitudinal studies have reported that children who are diagnosed with asthma later in life show impaired lung function during infancy. This suggests that the perinatal and preschool years are important for lung development and asthma risk. Our study aims to identify novel risk factors of asthma and low lung during this critical window of early childhood. Specifically, we will identify genetic factors inherited from parents to children that are associated with lung health and asthma risk. In addition, we will determine if certain environmental exposures during pregnancy and throughout early childhood affect genetic predisposition to asthma or lung function. Our innovative study leverages existing data and resources from the largest population-based birth cohort in Canada that recruited over 3000 families to study early-life determinants of chronic diseases such as asthma. In addition, we have established collaborations with international childhood cohorts to replicate identified risk factors. The knowledge gained from this proposed study will inform on mitigation strategies to reduce the burden of asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases through public policy and educating the public as well as health care providers.