Natural History: Wheeze from childhood to adulthood

The recent well designed longitudinal studies which followed children form early in life to adulthood pro-duced a remarkable change in our understanding of the natural history of asthma. It seems established that, in the majority of cases of persistent asthma, the symptoms begin during the preschool years and track significantly thereafter. Moreover, the two longest longitudinal studies of asthma conducted in Australia1 and New Zealand2 have shown that deficits in lung function are already pre-sent by 9 years of age among asthmatic children, and that these deficits persist up to adulthood3. The cohort from New Zealand has followed children from 9 to 26 years of age with questionnaires, pulmonary function tests and allergy testing. At 26 years of age, about 27 % of the study participants were still wheezing