Newcastle University

Project:

Air pollution and respiratory infections in the 1000 families cohort

Project Leader(s): Dr Susan Hodgson
Partners: Institute of Research on the Environment and Sustainability, Newcastle University

In May and June 1947 all babies born in Newcastle upon Tyne were recruited into a prospective cohort study, the ‘Thousand Families’ study.  This study was set up to investigate the extent to which infectious disease was undermining the health of infants in Newcastle, who had a high death rate in infancy and early childhood.  The Thousand Families children were studied in detail until the age of 15 years, with the study team being notified of each child’s illnesses, including all episodes of respiratory, alimentary and other infections by parents, GPs and hospital staff.

 This cohort is therefore a valuable resource to aid in the identification and quantification of important risk factors for infectious respiratory diseases.  The prospective nature of the study, and the fact exhaustive infections data are available from birth to age 15, as well as respiratory health data at age 50, provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact of early life experiences and infections on respiratory health in later life.

The original analysis of the Thousand Families study included an assessment of infectious disease incidence in infancy and childhood, and found that children from poorer families were at greatest risk of severe respiratory infection in their first year of life, and that rates of severe respiratory infection were significantly higher among children living in over-crowded housing, children from lower social classes, and children with poor standards of maternal care.  The original analysis also showed that children who had severe respiratory infection before the age of five were seven times more likely to develop chronic lung disease by age 15 years.

Our current work will utilise linear and logistic regression to provide a more in-depth analysis of the social and environmental determinants of respiratory infections in this cohort.  The specific focus of this work is to investigate the impact of air pollution on respiratory infections in infancy and childhood, with future analyses potentially looking at the impacts of early life respiratory infections on respiratory health in later life.