Pneumonia during the first two years of life does not increase risk of respiratory infections in preschool children

Pneumonia in the first 2 years of life, and asthma in preschool‐age children

“…We previously reported that children hospitalized with radiologically confirmed pneumonia during the first 2 years of life did not have an increased risk of respiratory infections at preschool age 8 . The present study, however, found that these children were more likely to have ever physician‐diagnosed asthma compared with those who had no hospitalization for pneumonia.…”

“…The present study was a part of a comprehensive research project that focused on long‐term morbidity of pneumonia in early life. The details of the research methods have been reported previously 8 . Briefly, we recruited two groups of children defined a priori as exposed and non‐exposed, based on whether they were hospitalized for pneumonia during the first 2 years of life.…”

Outcome after early respiratory infection: Prospective, population‐based designs needed

“…Only 36 (56%) of the children with early‐life pneumonia attended follow up. The authors have also reported recently that hospitalization for pneumonia had no influence on the occurrence of respiratory infections up to preschool age 2 …”

“…The cases were retrospectively charted from the registers of two hospitals, and two controls were matched for each case. The number of cases, however, was only 55, and the authors did not describe whether the controls were collected from population registers (population‐based data collection) or from hospital registers (hospital‐based data collection) 1,2 . The selection of controls is important and carries a similar risk for biased data to that of the cases 3 .…”