LONDON – People were twice as likely to die prematurely from a respiratory disease if they had contracted one as a young child, a decades-long study looking at how childhood lung infections impact adult health revealed.

The study, which started in 1946 with a cohort of people all born in the same week, established a link between people who had a lung infection – such as bronchitis or pneumonia – before the age of two, and early death from respiratory diseases, according to the findings published on Tuesday in the Lancet medical journal.

Death before the age of 73 was considered premature in the study.

While infant lower respiratory tract infections have previously been linked to problems with adult lung function, the association with earlier death was unknown, according to the authors.

The researchers found the relationship existed regardless of socio-economic factors and smoking status.

The results show “how important children’s health is and optimising childhood health”, said Dr James Allinson, a respiratory consultant and lecturer at Imperial College London who was lead author on the study. He added that the first two years of life are a critical development period for the lungs.

The study used data from a nationwide British group recruited in 1946 and looked at health and death records up to 2019.

The researchers adjusted the analysis to take into account other factors such as socio-economic background and found there was a 2.1 per cent rate of premature death from respiratory diseases among those who had an infection as an infant, against 1.1 per cent among those who did not. 

The increased risk translates to one in five, or 179,188, excess deaths from respiratory diseases across England and Wales between 1972 and 2019, the researchers said.

While the results highlight the importance of childhood health and its link to adult outcomes, the people in the study were born in a post-war era and two years before the creation of Britain’s National Health Service, when healthcare support was not as robust as it is today.

Having a lung infection before the age of two was only associated with an increased risk of premature death from respiratory diseases, and not with any other illnesses, the study said. BLOOMBERG