Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and flying

A 75-year-old man with type 2 diabetes and a history of previous empyema surgery was admitted to our hospital due to difficulty moving caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and dehydration. During the first two days of hospitalization, intestinal myiasis was diagnosed after maggots were found in his diapers. After the maggots disappeared, he developed a fever, prompting antibiotic therapy for a suspected secondary infection, resulting in clinical improvement. Despite thorough home cleaning, no flies or maggots were found, and the source of infection and the fly species remained unknown...

The respiratory barrier, a thin epithelial barrier that separates the interior of the human body from the environment, is easily damaged by toxicants, and chronic respiratory diseases are common. It also allows the permeation of drugs for topical treatment. Animal experimentation is used to train medical technicians, evaluate toxicants, and develop inhaled formulations. Species differences in the architecture of the respiratory tract explain why some species are better at predicting human toxicity than others...

Disruption of epithelial barriers is a common disease manifestation in chronic degenerative diseases of the airways, lung and intestine. Extensive human genetic studies have identified risk loci in such diseases, including in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The genes associated with these loci have not fully been determined, and functional characterization of such genes requires extensive studies in model organisms. Here, we report the results of a screen in Drosophila melanogaster that allowed for rapid identification, validation and prioritization of COPD risk genes that were selected based on risk loci identified in human genome-wide association studies (GWAS) studies...

Airway remodeling is an umbrella term for structural changes in the conducting airways that occur in chronic inflammatory lung diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The pathobiology of remodeling involves multiple mesenchymal and lymphoid cell types and finally leads to a variety of hardly reversible changes such as hyperplasia of goblet cells, thickening of the reticular basement membrane, deposition of collagen, peribronchial fibrosis, angiogenesis and hyperplasia of bronchial smooth muscle cells...

Early life environmental influences such as exposure to cigarette smoke (CS) can disturb molecular processes of lung development and thereby increase the risk for later development of chronic respiratory diseases. Among the latter, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are the most common. The airway epithelium plays a key role in their disease pathophysiology but how CS exposure in early life influences airway developmental pathways and epithelial stress responses or survival is poorly understood...

The fast spread of SARS-CoV-2 presented a worldwide challenge to public health, economy, and educational system, affecting wellbeing of human society. With high transmission rates, there are increasing evidences of COVID-19 spread via bioaerosols from an infected person. The current review was conducted to examine airborne pollen impact on COVID-19 transmission and to identify the major gaps for post-pandemic research. The study used all key terms to identify revenant literature and observation were collated for the current research...

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects about 25% of the general population worldwide. Although epidemiology of NAFLD is well studied in the United States, there is paucity of data for the Asian Americans. Our aim was to assess the prevalence and risk factors for NAFLD among Asian Americans. METHODS: We utilized NHANES data for 2011-2016. We defined NAFLD using recently derived US-FLI. Relative risks (RRs) and population attributable fractions (PAFs) of metabolic components on atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and advanced fibrosis were calculated for Asian Americans, and these rates were compared to non-Hispanic whites...

Many FA who flew prior to the ban on smoking in commercial aircraft exhibit an unusual pattern of long-term pulmonary dysfunction. This randomized controlled study tested the hypothesis that digitally delivered meditative movement (MM) training improves chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)-related symptoms in flight attendants (FA) who were exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke (SHCS) while flying. Phase I of this two-phase clinical trial was a single-arm non-randomized pilot study that developed and tested methods for MM intervention; we now report on Phase II, a randomized controlled trial comparing MM to a control group of similar FA receiving health education (HE) videos...

Myiasis is caused by the larvae of flies infesting animal or human tissues and organs. This report aims to present a case of pharyngeal myiasis caused by the larvae of Oestrus ovis (Diptera: Oestridae). A 55-yr old drug addict living in the Shahindeje village of Western Azerbaijan Province, northwestern Iran was referred to the Emam Reza Hospital in Tabriz, having a medical history of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and hospitalized due to respiratory distress, 20 days ago. He was intubated with a mechanical ventilator (MV) because of his respiratory distress condition...

Hypercapnia, elevated partial pressure of CO2 in blood and tissue, develops in many patients with chronic severe obstructive pulmonary disease and other advanced lung disorders. Patients with advanced disease frequently develop bacterial lung infections, and hypercapnia is a risk factor for mortality in such individuals. We previously demonstrated that hypercapnia suppresses induction of NF-κB-regulated innate immune response genes required for host defense in human, mouse, and Drosophila cells, and it increases mortality from bacterial infections in both mice and Drosophila...

Flying is the most important way of travelling in the continually growing international tourism. Number of passengers and those with preexisting diseases, mainly with cardiopulmonary problems, is increasing over years. One of the main tasks of the pre-travel advice is to assess tolerance to hypoxia of the traveler, and specify the necessity, as well as the type and volume of supplementary oxygen therapy. It is indispensable to know the cabin-environment and impact of that on the travelers' health. Travel medicine specialist has to be aware of the examinations which provide information for the appropriate decision on the fit-to-fly condition of the patient...

The reduced pressure in an aircraft cabin may cause significant hypoxaemia and respiratory symptoms in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The current study evaluated whether there is a relationship between hypoxaemia obtained during hypoxia-altitude simulation testing (HAST), simulating an altitude of 2438 m, and the reporting of respiratory symptoms during air travel. 82 patients with moderate to very severe COPD answered an air travel questionnaire. Arterial oxygen tensions during HAST (PaO2HAST) in subjects with and without in-flight respiratory symptoms were compared...

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are characterized by chronic airway inflammation and major structural lung tissue changes including increased extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition. Inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta(2)-agonists (LABA) are the basic treatment for both diseases, but their effect on airway remodeling remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the effect of corticosteroids and LABA, alone or in combination, on total ECM and collagen deposition, gene expression, cell proliferation, and IL-6, IL-8, and TGF-beta(1) levels by primary human lung fibroblasts...

In view of the limited resources of health systems, telemedicine offers possibilities to supplement the known forms of care and supervision of patients and to intensify them on the side of patients as well as of medical care. Telemonitoring adds to but does not replace traditional home visits or the medical consultations. It is clearly structured, reproducible, and based on modern technology for communication between patients and doctors. In this way "flying visits" can be made to the patient with a high frequency which otherwise would never be possible for financial and practical reasons...

Flying may expose passengers to hypoxic conditions, which may induce hypoxemia, particularly in those with chronic heart and/or lung disease. Onset of dyspnea, wheezing, chest pain, cyanosis and right heart failure can lead to urgent need for oxygen during flight. The hypoxia inhalation test (HIT) provides a safe and simple means of identifying those who may develop hypoxemia during flight. We report our experience with 48 self-reporting patients who underwent HIT prior to pre-planned air travel. They inhaled for 15-minute periods a reduced oxygen concentration (F1O2 15%) under normobaric conditions, during which O2 saturation was monitored by pulse oximeter; electrocardiogram, blood pressure and symptoms were also monitored...

The alveolar-arterial oxygen tension difference provides a useful clinical indication of ventilation-blood flow mismatching in the lungs. In some clinical situations involving alveolar hypoxia (e.g., patients with chronic obstructive lung disease flying in commercial aircraft or normal humans at high altitudes) it would be useful to know this tension difference to predict the likely arterial PO2 under such potentially stressful conditions. Such estimates would require multiple arterial punctures performed under a variety of trying circumstances, conditions usually far distant from a suitable analytic facility...