Physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and childhood asthma: a European collaborative analysis

Objectives To investigate the associations of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour in early childhood with asthma and reduced lung function in later childhood within a large collaborative study.

Design Pooling of longitudinal data from collaborating birth cohorts using meta-analysis of separate cohort-specific estimates and analysis of individual participant data of all cohorts combined.

Setting Children aged 0–18 years from 26 European birth cohorts.

Participants 136 071 individual children from 26 cohorts, with information on PA and/or sedentary behaviour in early childhood and asthma assessment in later childhood.

Main outcome measure Questionnaire-based current asthma and lung function measured by spirometry (forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), FEV1/forced vital capacity) at age 6–18 years.

Results Questionnaire-based and accelerometry-based PA and sedentary behaviour at age 3–5 years was not associated with asthma at age 6–18 years (PA in hours/day adjusted OR 1.01, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.04; sedentary behaviour in hours/day adjusted OR 1.03, 95% CI 0.99 to 1.07). PA was not associated with lung function at any age. Analyses of sedentary behaviour and lung function showed inconsistent results.

Conclusions Reduced PA and increased sedentary behaviour before 6 years of age were not associated with the presence of asthma later in childhood.

Data availability statement

Due to data protection reasons, the datasets generated during the current study cannot be made publicly available. The cohort-specific datasets are available to interested researchers on reasonable request, provided the release is consistent with the obtained consent of the study participants of the cohort. This will not be possible for all cohorts involved. Ethical approval might be necessary to be obtained for the release and a data transfer agreement must be accepted.