Echoes of smoke: unwinding multigenerational asthma risk through longitudinal cohorts

Extract In respiratory epidemiology, few studies bridge the temporal and biological distance between pre-conception exposures and adult disease trajectories. The article by Liu et al. [1], published in this issue of ERJ Open Research, does that by offering evidence that parental passive smoke exposure before age 15 years is associated with specific asthma trajectories in their offspring, tracked meticulously from childhood to middle age. This work is not only a testament to the power of longitudinal cohort studies but also supports the concept that asthma is a multigenerational, life-course disease.