Feature Channels: Respiratory Diseases and Disorders

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Nationally, the highest rates of asthma-related deaths and hospitalizations are among low-income minority adults, but most existing research doesn’t focus on these patients. In particular, studies may not investigate patients where they live, in complicated, difficult circumstances. Many adult asthma patients have multiple diseases and exposure to tobacco smoke, but much research reflects the convenience of recruiting patients in clinics and on the relative simplicity of studying patients who do not have accompanying diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity.

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Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a computer simulation that helps predict under which circumstances a new short-course treatment regimen for drug-resistant tuberculosis could substantially reduce the global incidence and spread of the disease.

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The Northwestern Medicine Chicago Proton Center will be the first proton center in the U.S. to use P-Cure’s innovative upright imaging technology for patients being treated for lung cancer.

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Patients with advanced malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) treated with a combination of surgery to remove the cancer but save their lung, plus photodynamic therapy and chemotherapy, had a median survival of nearly three years, with a subset of patients living longer than seven years, according to new research published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

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The chronic lung inflammation that is a hallmark of cystic fibrosis, has, for the first time, been linked to a new class of bacterial enzymes that hijack the patient’s immune response and prevent the body from calling off runaway inflammation, according to a laboratory investigation led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

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Research lays groundwork for large VA study on respiratory health in Iraq, Afghanistan Vets

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Researchers cracked the complete genetic code of individual cells in healthy and diseased human lung tissues to find potential new molecular targets for diagnosing and treating the lethal lung disease Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). Scientists from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in collaboration with investigators at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, publish their findings Dec. 8 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insights (JCI Insight).

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An inactive lifestyle may increase the risk of environmentally induced asthma symptoms. In a new study, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency researchers found that sedentary rats exposed to varying degrees of ozone, a type of air pollution, had higher markers for chronic disease when compared to counterparts that were more active.

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US military veterans have high rates of potentially harmful respiratory exposures—which are linked to an increased likelihood of respiratory diseases, reports a study in the December Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

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A new drug has been approved by the FDA in the fight against lung cancer. Tecentriq is being used by patients like Cornelius Bresnan, who had late-stage cancer.

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Working with human immune cells in the laboratory, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have identified a critical cellular "off" switch for the inflammatory immune response that contributes to lung-constricting asthma attacks. The switch, they say, is composed of regulatory proteins that control an immune signaling pathway in cells.

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Menopausal women appear to experience an accelerated decline in lung function, according to new research published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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The recent catastrophic NJ Transit train accident in Hoboken highlights one of the perils of undiagnosed sleep apnea – the threat to transportation safety. As in several other recent calamitous accidents, the engineer fell asleep at the wheel due to a medical condition that causes sleepiness, and the presence of which he was not aware. When an individual operates a vehicle of public transportation, whether it be a train, a bus or a plane, many lives are in their hands. Anytime the operator of one of these modes of transportation becomes drowsy, or worse, falls asleep at the controls, many lives are immediately placed in jeopardy. This is why these safety-critical personnel should be screened and monitored for their fitness for their work, including identifying the presence of sleep disorders. In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration is expected to issue a safety advisory this week stressing the importance of sleep apnea screening and treatment.

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Cedars-Sinai investigators have pinpointed a major cause of pulmonary fibrosis, a mysterious and deadly disease that scars the lungs and obstructs breathing. The disease, which has no known cure, appears to result from the failure of special lung stem cells that help airways recover from injury, the investigators reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

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A cellular component known as the Golgi apparatus may play a role in how lung cancer metastasizes, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center whose findings were reported in the Nov. 21 online issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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Lung-MAP (SWOG S1400) is a multi-drug, multi-sub-study, biomarker-driven squamous cell lung cancer clinical trial that uses state-of-the-art genomic profiling to match patients to sub-studies testing investigational treatments that may target the genomic alterations, or mutations, found to be driving the growth of their cancer.

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Professor Roy S. Herbst, M.D., Ph.D., Yale University, New Haven, will be recognized by The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer with a Distinguished Award at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

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Immunotherapy continues to revolutionize the field of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with researchers now focusing on the optimal use of immune agents in the frontline setting.

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A new method which doubles the usual time donor lungs can remain outside the body can benefit patients, staff and allow retrieval of donor lungs across greater geographical areas.