Byron and Pritchard were joined on stage by the award’s inspiration and first winner (in 2006), Charlie Thiel himself. Attending RDD 62 years after his invention of the pressurized metered dose inhaler, Thiel shared memories of his work at Riker Laboratories and the early days of the pMDI with RDD attendees throughout the week.
Honored to catch up with a @3M legend and industry pioneer Charlie Thiel at the @rddonline conference. At age 90, still providing valued insight to inhalation drug delivery. pic.twitter.com/im5SnmA5QZ
— Simmon (@simmonschaefer) April 24, 2018
The plenary lecture
Following the award presentation, Fernando Martinez of the University of Arizona delivered the plenary lecture titled, “The Importance of Early Life Predictors of Airway Disease: New Strategies to Prevent Asthma and COPD.” Martinez pointed out that the idea that “most chronic diseases have their origins during the first years of life” is now widely accepted and went on to show specifically how that idea applies to asthma and COPD.
Asthma, Martinez said, is a disease that starts in childhood and involves significant remodeling, with most of that remodeling occurring by the age of 6. “Severe asthma is a disease of the early years,” he asserted, pointing out the numerous environmental factors known to affect the prevalence and severity of asthma, including childhood exposure to rhinovirus, animals, and air pollution.
For COPD, he explained, the disease may originate as early as birth, when some children, especially those born prematurely, have reduced lung function from the start, and by the age of 26, people have split into two groups: those with normal lung function and those with reduced lung function. Displaying a graph showing the same rates of decline in lung function for both smokers and non-smokers in both groups after that age, Martinez asserted that the main difference between those who get COPD and those who don’t is the level of lung function at the time that the decline begins.
Furthermore, Martinez noted, “The most important factor that determines lung function at the age of 26 is lung function at birth” and that “intrauterine life is a very good predictor of what will happen in your adult life – prematurity is a major factor.” For both asthma and COPD, he concluded, “the horses are out of the barn very early.”
