Measurements of lung function are used by medics to help decide whether someone has a respiratory disease or not. These measurements are usually compared against population reference values. However, sometimes it is difficult to say if a person with lung function below the expected values for their age, sex, and height really have a disease or are part of a disadvantaged group whose lungs did not grow as much as expected.<\/p>\n
Using data from adults in the multinational Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study<\/a>, we estimated how far certain measures of lung function, that is the forced vital capacity (FVC)<\/a> and the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1<\/sub>)<\/a> to FVC ratio (FEV1<\/sub>\/FVC<\/a>), vary between and within world regions. We made this using data from people who have never smoked, do not have respiratory symptoms of disease and have not been diagnosed with a respiratory disease.<\/p>\n We found that the FVC in relation to age and height varies geographically, but that there is no geographical variation in the FEV1<\/sub>\/FVC ratio.<\/p>\n The low values of FVC in some world regions should not be considered optimal as they may well be associated with increased mortality (more on this here<\/a>).<\/p>\n