%0 Journal Article
%T A Grand Challenge of Factors Influencing Lung Health
%A Laurent P. Nicod
%J Frontiers in Medicine
%D 2014
%I Frontiers Media
%R 10.3389/fmed.2014.00011
%X Respiratory diseases whether communicable or non communicable, acute or chronic impact on health of millions of people. Several research areas, strongly linked to the pathogenesis of respiratory diseases have been identified as priorities overarching different specialties (Nicod, Kamel et al. 2011, Gibson, Loddenkemper et al. 2013). Some are related to early origin of lung disease. Lifestyle consequences have obvious consequences as well as environmental factors related to inhaled particles or pathogens impacting the integrity of the airways, or of our microbiote with dysbiose. Lung defenses are important to preserve our lungs from aggression. Their changes in life are important allowing more vulnerability early in childhood as well as late in life. Lung diseases are more frequent with aging and this represents several challenges. The early origin of lung diseases should be better analyzed to understand lung development and prevent diseases impacting adulthood (Baraldi and Filippone 2007). Prenatal factors are known to influence lung health later in life with both nutritional deficiencies and maternal smoking already recognized as having epigenetic and trans-generational effects (Kabesch, Michel et al. 2010). Life expectancy of several congenital defects has improved as infants with cystic fibrosis or neuromuscular disease benefit from early interventions with new targeted biological approaches (Grasemann and Ratjen 2010). Effective prevention of several early infections is important, in order to reduce incidence of premature death or bronchiolitis with long term sequelae. The role of microbiote for the education of the immune system appear an important challenge, to prevent allergies to common allergens in the form of rhinitis or asthma of varying severity, often persisting into adulthood (Marsland 2013), (Trompette, Gollwitzer et al. 2014). Lifestyle can impact lung health markedly. It is established that nutritional deficiencies impair lung growth, favor infections and can decrease the ability to control inflammatory processes due, for instance, to lack of antioxidative factors (Samolinski, Fronczak et al. 2012), (Bentley, Kritchevsky et al. 2012). A decrease of physical activity, often combined with obesity, impacts on disorders such as asthma. Obesity also leads to obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) (ten Hacken 2009). The overall cardiovascular and metabolic consequences of OSAS are now recognized to be significant and add to the overall burden of diseases. The physiopathological process involved need to be better understood. Inhaled particles
%K Lung Health
%K Lung Diseases
%K lifestyle factors
%K environmental factors
%K biomarkers
%U http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fmed.2014.00011/full