Our goal is to improve the health of children who suffer from respiratory infections and to find affordable ways to prevent childhood asthma and chronic lung diseases. 

The project's ambition is to improve outcomes in early childhood lower respiratory infections (cLRTI) and to develop affordable prevention of childhood asthma and chronic lung disease in Nepal. 

With C-LUNG we are capitalizing on the long-term collaboration between NTNU and St. Olavs Hospital and Dhulikhel Hospital (DH) researchers and clinicians and our experience in conducting large cohort studies in this patient group in Norway and Nepal. The project builds on a timely local ambition to establish a Center for childhood respiratory tract infections to strengthen local molecular diagnostics and research capacity. 

To meet our ambition we have designed a clinical prospective C-LUNG Study to establish state-of-the-art knowledge to reveal the role of LRTI in childhood as a determinant of long-term lung health/chronic lung disease in a low-income country. We will assess etiology patterns in children with LRTI. By strengthening local molecular diagnostic and biobanking of samples for retrospective viral tests, the basis for future surveillance capacity has also been formed. In C-LUNG we will follow up children after early-life LRTI, to assess the rate of recurrent LRTIs, wheezing episodes, lung function and compare them to a control group of children without LRTI. We will extend traditional outcome assessments including family and child-related QoL effects. In a selection of the LRTI study participants with the highest risk of asthma development, we will evaluate the effects of corticosteroids in a randomized controlled trial. 

In addition, we will do in-depth immune profiling of blood from children with different viral infections both at admission and one year later. The goal is to identify and assess immune dysregulations caused by different respiratory viruses that can be associated with the development of chronic lung disease.