Omics approaches to bronchopulmonary dysplasia: a first step in the right direction?

Since its first clinical description in 1967, and the subsequent definition proposed by Jobe and Bancalari in 2001, bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) has been diagnosed on the basis of clinical epiphenomena, that is, oxygenation requirement.1 2 The International Neonatal Consortium has identified the need for tools capable of predicting BPD and monitoring its progression as a research priority since 2017.3 Accordingly, several studies have suggested lung ultrasound as a promising approach to predict BPD and track its evolution by detecting impaired lung aeration4; however, we still observe a worrisome lack of sufficiently suitable and reliable biomarkers to predict BPD by capturing its complex pathobiology.