Lung function varies across countries and within regions
Measurements of lung function are used by medics to help decide whether someone has a respiratory disease or not. These measurements are usually compared against population reference values. However, sometimes it is difficult to say if a person with lung function below the expected values for their age, sex, and height really have a disease or are part of a disadvantaged group whose lungs did not grow as much as expected.
Using data from adults in the multinational Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study, we estimated how far certain measures of lung function, that is the forced vital capacity (FVC) and the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) to FVC ratio (FEV1/FVC), vary between and within world regions. We made this using data from people who have never smoked, do not have respiratory symptoms of disease and have not been diagnosed with a respiratory disease.
We found that the FVC in relation to age and height varies geographically, but that there is no geographical variation in the FEV1/FVC ratio.
The low values of FVC in some world regions should not be considered optimal as they may well be associated with increased mortality (more on this here).
This manuscript has been published in Pulmonology and is available in open access here: doi.org/10.1080/25310429.2024.2430491.