Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center.
Here's some encouraging news for once regarding SARS-CoV-2 infections: a study of young adults for whom prepandemic spirometry data were available showed that COVID-19 did not have a significant impact on lung function, even among patients with asthma.
Dr Ida Mogensen
Among 853 Swedish men and women (mean age, 22 years) who were part of a birth cohort study, there were no significant differences in either forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) or in the ratio of FEV1 to forced vital capacity, reported Ida Mogensen, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden.
"We found no effect of COVID-19 on spirometric lung function in generally healthy adults," she said in oral abstract presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) 2021 International Congress, which was held online.
The findings echo those of a small study that involved 73 children and adolescents with COVID-19 and 45 uninfected control persons. The investigators in that study, which was also presented at ERS 2021, found that there were no significant differences in the frequency of abnormal pulmonary function measures between case patients and control patients (
