Does ethnicity influence lung function in preschool children?

Effective management of respiratory diseases in young children requires objective outcome measures that do not rely simply on parental reports of symptoms, which are known to be unreliable [1,2]. Assessment of lung function forms an integral part of the diagnosis and management of lung disease in both older children and adults and continuous, objective assessments of lung function from birth have recently become possible [3,4]. However, reliable use of such measures is only possible if appropriate normative values are available to distinguish the effects of disease and treatment from those of growth and development. Until recently, the preschool years (between the child’s second and sixth birthday) had been commonly referred to as the ‘dark ages’ of pediatric lung function testing. Over the last 15 years, an increasing number of publications have described how successful measurements can be obtained in children of this age, and international standards for data collection and interpretation have now been published. Reference data from healthy children are available for a variety of measurements in preschool children, but up until now almost all of these have been in white children.