More than 2,000 London pupils have helped researchers linked to Great Ormond Street Hospital revolutionise the way conditions such as asthma, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease are diagnosed and treated.
They participated in “blowing tests” in a £1.2 million Wellcome Trust-funded study which provided the first clear evidence of how lung capacities differ between children of different ethnicities.
Experts at the Institute of Child Health have now devised new benchmarks to measure sick children against — including “gold standard” lung growth charts — to improve the diagnosis of lung diseases.
Janet Stocks, professor of respiratory physiology at the Institute of Child Health, said: “It’s been known for about 150 years that there are ethnic differences in lung function, but never before has there been a multi-ethnic study of this size among primary school children to establish the true impact of these differences.”
