Children and adults with asthma and impaired lung function have been reported to have low-grade systemic inflammation, but it is unknown whether this inflammation starts before symptoms and in particular whether low-grade inflammation is present in asymptomatic neonates with reduced lung function.
We sought to investigate the possible association between neonatal lung function and biomarkers of systemic inflammation.
Plasma levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), IL-1ß, IL-6, TNF-a, and CXCL8 (IL-8) were measured at age 6 months in 300 children of the Copenhagen Prospective Study on Asthma in Childhood2000 birth cohort who had completed neonatal lung function testing at age 4 weeks. Associations between neonatal lung function indices and inflammatory biomarkers were investigated by conventional statistics and unsupervised principal component analysis.
The neonatal forced expiratory volume at 0.5 seconds was inversely associated with hs-CRP (ß-coefficient, -0.12; 95% CI, -0.21 to -0.04; P