Extract

During pregnancy, an obstetrician takes care of both mother's and child's health. After birth, a paediatrician continues to care for the child and, if nothing serious and unexpected happens, most adolescents will be on their own without sanitary control until about their 5th–6th decade of age, where prevalent cardiovascular, respiratory and/or metabolic chronic diseases begin to emerge. This has been described as a “black box” period [1] which, interestingly, may be full of opportunities for prevention, early diagnosis, careful monitoring and, eventually, early intervention. Two recent observations support this possibility. First, between 4 and 12% of young adults (∼25 years of age) in the general population have low lung function and, importantly, they are at a higher risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases later in life, and die prematurely [2, 3].