Small airway disease

INTRODUCTION: Macrophages play an important role in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Cigarette smoke (CS) impairs autophagy in alveolar macrophages from COPD patients, and autophagic impairment leads to reduced clearance of protein aggregates, dysfunctional mitochondria, and defective bacterial delivery to lysosomes. However, the exact function of lung macrophage autophagy in the pathogenesis of CS-induced COPD remains largely unknown. METHODS: Western blot detected the expression of autophagy-related proteins induced by CSE...

INTRODUCTION: Use of mechanical ventilation during general anesthesia is a necessary practice in the anesthetization of small cetaceans as spontaneous ventilation fails to provide adequate gas exchange. Currently available methods of ventilation do not account for the intermittent breathing strategy of representative species within this infraorder of fully aquatic mammals and may have a significant effect on cardiac and respiratory physiology. METHODS: To understand the impact of mechanical ventilation on cardiopulmonary function in one small species of cetacean, the bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus ), we compared controlled mechanical ventilation (CMV) to a novel ventilation method known as apneustic anesthesia ventilation (AAV)...

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study is to understand chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) phenotypes and their progressions by quantifying heterogeneities of lung ventilation from the single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images and establishing associations with the quantitative computed tomography (qCT) imaging-based clusters and variables. METHODS: Eight COPD patients completed a longitudinal study of three visits with intervals of about a year...

When activated by increase in intracellular Ca2+ , anoctamins (TMEM16 proteins) operate as phospholipid scramblases and as ion channels. Anoctamin 1 (ANO1) is the Ca2+ -activated epithelial anion-selective channel that is coexpressed together with the abundant scramblase ANO6 and additional intracellular anoctamins. In salivary and pancreatic glands, ANO1 is tightly packed in the apical membrane and secretes Cl- . Epithelia of airways and gut use cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) as an apical Cl- exit pathway while ANO1 supports Cl- secretion mainly by facilitating activation of luminal CFTR and basolateral K+ channels...

RATIONALE: Exposure to burn pit smoke, desert and combat dust, and diesel exhaust during military deployment to Southwest Asia and Afghanistan (SWA) can cause deployment-related respiratory diseases (DRRDs) and may confer risk for worsening lung function after return. METHODS: Study subjects were SWA-deployed veterans who underwent occupational lung disease evaluation (n=219). We assessed differences in lung function by deployment exposures and DRRD diagnoses. We used linear mixed models to assess changes in lung function over time...

KEY CLINICAL MESSAGE: Even in the absence of other symptoms or other pulmonary manifestations suggesting Sjögren's syndrome (SS), it is necessary to include SS in the differential diagnosis of diffuse cystic lung disease (CLD). ABSTRACT: A case of SS that presented initially with diffuse CLD is reported. This case is considered rare because diffuse pulmonary cysts were observed in the early stage with few symptoms, only cysts were observed without other lung lesions on imaging, cyst formation was histologically considered to be alveolar loss, and airway lesions not observed on imaging were suspected based on lung function testing...

Interstitial lung disorders are a group of respiratory diseases characterized by interstitial compartment infiltration, varying degrees of infiltration, and fibrosis, with or without small airway involvement. Although some are idiopathic (e.g., idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, idiopathic interstitial pneumonias, and sarcoidosis), the great majority have an underlying etiology, such as systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease (SARD, also called Connective Tissue Diseases or CTD), inhalational exposure to organic matter, medications, and rarely, genetic disorders...

BACKGROUND: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous condition. We hypothesized that the unbiased integration of different COPD lung omics using a novel multi-layer approach may unravel mechanisms associated with clinical characteristics. METHODS: We profiled mRNA, miRNA and methylome in lung tissue samples from 135 former smokers with COPD. For each omic (layer) we built a patient network based on molecular similarity. The three networks were used to build a multi-layer network, and optimization of multiplex-modularity was employed to identify patient communities across the three distinct layers...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Brachytherapy, a new form of radiation therapy, has been used to treat lung cancer and consists of two main forms of treatment: endobronchial brachytherapy and radioactive seed implantation brachytherapy (RSI-BT), the latter of which is used to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The use of RSI-BT in the treatment of NSCLC at our centre has yielded some positive results. METHODS: To more fully consider the context of this application, we conducted a search of PubMed from 2018 to March 5, 2023...

The interaction between extracellular vesicles (EVs) and SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, especially in people with cystic fibrosis (PwCF) is insufficiently studied. EVs are small membrane-bound particles involved in cell-cell communications in different physiological and pathological conditions, including inflammation and infection. The CF airway cells release EVs that differ from those released by healthy cells and may play an intriguing role in regulating the inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2. On the one hand, EVs may activate neutrophils and exacerbate inflammation...

Background : Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is an irreversible lung fibrotic disorder of unknown cause. It has been reported that bacterial and viral co-infections exacerbate disease pathogenesis. These pathogens use adhesion molecules such as platelet activating factor receptor (PAFR) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) to gain cellular entry, causing infections. Methods : Immunohistochemical staining was carried out for lung resections from IPF patients (n = 11) and normal controls (n = 12)...

BACKGROUND: Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) improves clinical outcomes and quality of life for patients with severe asthma and has shown sustained reductions in airway narrowing and air trapping in previous CT studies. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive analysis, including CT evaluation, of clinical outcomes in Japanese patients who have undergone BT for severe asthma. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of BT in Japanese asthma patients, with a focus on the CT metric "WA at Pi10" to assess airway disease...

Elevated eosinophil counts are associated with various diseases, including eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) and allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA). EGPA is a rare small-vessel vasculitis characterized by asthma, eosinophilia, fleeting pulmonary infiltrates, and systemic manifestations. ABPA, initiated by immune reactions against Aspergillus fumigatus in the airways, presents with poorly controlled asthma, wheezing, hemoptysis, productive cough, and systemic symptoms, which result in characteristic central bronchiectasis...

INTRODUCTION: The human orthopneumovirus, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), is the causative agent of severe lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) and exacerbations of chronic lung diseases. In immune competent hosts, RSV productively infects highly differentiated epithelial cells, where it elicits robust anti-viral, cytokine and remodeling programs. By contrast, basal cells are relatively resistant to RSV infection, in part, because of constitutive expression of an intrinsic innate immune response (IIR) consisting of a subgroup of interferon (IFN) responsive genes...

Superior vena cava (SVC) syndrome occurs due to obstructed blood flow through the SVC. It can present clinically on a spectrum, between asymptomatic and life-threatening emergency. Patients commonly report a feeling of fullness in the head, facial, neck and upper extremity edema, and dyspnea. On imaging, patients commonly have superior mediastinal widening and pleural effusion. The majority of cases are due to malignant causes, with non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer, and lymphoma the most commonly associated malignancies...

BACKGROUND: Light chain deposition disease (LCDD) is a very rare entity. Clinical manifestations of LCDD vary according to the organs involved. Data on pulmonary LCDD are scarce and limited to small series or case reports. This study aimed to describe the characteristics and outcome of diffuse pulmonary non-amyloid LCDD localized to the lungs. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: A multicenter retrospective cohort study was conducted. Clinical characteristics were collected, and chest CTs were centrally reviewed...

Emerging evidence has suggested that exposure to PM2.5 is a significant contributing factor to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, the underlying biological effects and mechanisms of PM2.5 in COPD pathology remain elusive. In this study, we aimed to investigate the implication and regulatory effect of biomass fuels related-PM2.5 (BRPM2.5 ) concerning the pathological process of fibroblast-to-myofibroblast transition (FMT) in the context of COPD. In vivo experimentation revealed that exposure to biofuel smoke was associated with airway inflammation in rats...

BACKGROUND: Chronic lung disease (CLD) occurs frequently in preterm infants and is associated with respiratory morbidity. Bronchodilators have the potential effect of dilating small airways with muscle hypertrophy. Increased compliance and tidal volume, and decreased airway resistance, have been documented with the use of bronchodilators in infants with CLD. Therefore, bronchodilators are widely considered to have a role in the prevention and treatment of CLD, but there remains uncertainty as to whether they improve clinical outcomes...

Severe bronchiolitis (i.e., bronchiolitis requiring hospitalization) during infancy is a heterogeneous condition associated with a high risk of developing childhood asthma. Yet, the exact mechanisms underlying the bronchiolitis-asthma link remain uncertain. Birth cohort studies have reported this association at the population level, including only small groups of patients with a history of bronchiolitis, and have attempted to identify the underlying biological mechanisms. Although this evidence has provided valuable insights, there are still unanswered questions regarding severe bronchiolitis-asthma pathogenesis...

UNLABELLED: The Plunging or cervical ranula is a mucus pseudocyst extension of the sublingual gland that is located below the mylohyoid muscle. In infants, owing to small sublingual and cervical space, clinically large cervical ranulas can lead to a significant impact on swallowing, crying, and even breathing (Carlini et al. in Pediatr Rep 8(4):6576, 2016; Övet et al. in Turk Arch Otorhinolaryngol 53(3):133-135, 2015). In these clinical pictures, we present a case of cervical ranula that grew in a short period leading to respiratory distress...