Johns Hopkins pediatric pulmonologist J. Michael Collaco discusses his research regarding chronic lung disease of prematurity, which is also called bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Babies born prematurely are often associated with risks and complications, and BPD is the most common complication. It is also the most common chronic respiratory condition in infants, and the second most common in children.
Hi, I'm Michael Coloso. I'm a pediatric pulmonologist here at Johns Hopkins. Today, I wanna talk to you about chronic lung disease of prematurity and some of the work that we're doing here at Hopkins to begin with. There are approximately 4 million live birds in the United States every year of those. Unfortunately, about 10% are preterm births or babies who are born at least three weeks earlier than their due date being born prematurely has a number of uh risks and complications. The most common complication of preterm birth is chronic lung disease of prematurity, also known as bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Approximately 50,000 infants every year in the United States are born with um chronic lung disease of prematurity. It makes it the most common chronic pediatric respiratory condition in infancy. And the second most common in childhood just after asthma while we know a lot about uh chronic lung disease of prematurity within the hospital or the neonatal intensive care unit, we know a lot less in the outpatient setting. For example, we don't know some of the basic information. So what is the long term history or course of disease? We don't know what medications or therapies make it better or worse to answer some of these questions. Uh, we turned, uh to a very fruitful and informative partnership with our patients and families. Approximately 15 years ago, patients and families began telling us what make things better or worse for their child's, uh, breathing. They did this through a series of questionnaires which take five minutes or less in clinic and we compile this information in an anonymous registry. This registry has helped us answer such questions as does sending my child to daycare make things better or worse. What if my child was exposed to second hand smoke? What if I live next to a major interstate? So in that sense, this partnership has been very helpful for answering some of these questions. There's still a lot of work to do right now. We're delving into questions such as which medications make my child's breathing better or worse such as diuretics and inhaled steroids. We're also looking at more specialized measures of respiratory disease such as the microbiome. And in the larger picture, we're starting to combine our efforts with other medical centers around the country in a collaborative. This allows us to harness ideas from a variety of physicians and scientists at other medical centers as well as uh pull larger sets of data together to answer more difficult questions. Additionally, there may be factors that may be present in other places other than Baltimore and Mid Atlantic region that may play into children's lung disease that we need to know about. I hope that uh this has been helpful in learning some of what we do here at Hopkins uh to learn more about chronic lung disease of prematurity. Thank you.
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