{"id":137,"date":"2024-12-15T08:12:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-15T08:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/global-respiratory-health\/?p=137"},"modified":"2024-12-15T08:12:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T08:12:28","slug":"lung-function-reference-equations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/global-respiratory-health\/2024\/12\/15\/lung-function-reference-equations\/","title":{"rendered":"Geographical variation in lung function"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Lung function varies across countries and within regions<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Using data from adults in the multinational <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/global-respiratory-health\/2023\/10\/23\/the-burden-of-obstructive-lung-disease-cohort\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study<\/a>, we estimated how far certain measures of lung function, that is the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spirometry#Forced_vital_capacity_(FVC)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">forced vital capacity (FVC)<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spirometry#Forced_expiratory_volume_in_1_second_(FEV1)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV<sub>1<\/sub>)<\/a> to FVC ratio (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spirometry#FEV1\/FVC_ratio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FEV<sub>1<\/sub>\/FVC<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n<p>We found that the FVC in relation to age and height varies geographically, but that there is no geographical variation in the FEV<sub>1<\/sub>\/FVC ratio.<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/ije\/dys011\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>This manuscript has been published in Pulmonology and is available in open access here: <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/25310429.2024.2430491\">doi.org\/10.1080\/25310429.2024.2430491<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317835,318204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obstructive-lung-diseases","category-restrictive-lung-diseases"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Geographical variation in lung function - Global Respiratory Health<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study analysis provides reference equations for FVC and FEV1\/FVC for various world regions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/global-respiratory-health\/2024\/12\/15\/lung-function-reference-equations\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Geographical variation in lung function - 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