By sequencing genetic material at a cell-by-cell level, researchers have described how type 2-high asthma affects the airways and results in mucus production with more detail than ever before. These findings , which help move forward scientific understanding of the biology behind asthma and could inform the development of targeted treatments for asthma and other airway diseases.
A new triple-combination drug treatment being trialed at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane could increase the life expectancy of patients with cystic fibrosis. Mater Research Institute-University of Queensland (MRI-UQ) researcher Dr. Lucy Burr said these patients were enrolled in Phase 2 of the clinical trial, which aimed at treating the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis.
A new study implicates the remodeling of nerves in the airways as a key contributor to heightened sensitivity and airway constriction in patients with asthma. The results provide new insight into a little-understood factor in the development of asthma, a condition that affects about 235 million people worldwide. The study is the first to demonstrate that inflammatory cells can alter nerve structure in the lungs to cause disease.
Around the globe, an estimated 235 million people suffer from asthma. Most people are able to manage their symptoms and live healthy, active lives. However, for some, current treatments are not effective. Managing symptoms can be difficult because triggers are lurking everywhere.
An integrated plasma proteomics classifier, which integrates the relative abundance of two plasma proteins with a clinical risk prediction model, can distinguish benign from malignant lung nodules in those at low-to-intermediate risk for cancer, according to a study published in the September issue of CHEST.
The novel tyrosine kinase inhibitor anlotinib improves survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to Chinese researchers.
Asthma patients, with a specific genetic profile, exhibit more intense symptoms following exposure to traffic pollution, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and collaborators. The study appeared online in Scientific Reports.
A new international guideline has been developed to help physicians diagnosis idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a rare and often fatal lung disease whose cause is unknown.
For the first time, researchers have devised a model to predict burn patients who are most likely to develop life-threatening acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The prediction model includes three factors: the extent of the patient's inhalation injury, the percentage of the patient's body that was burned and whether the patient had high levels of a blood clotting protein called von Willebrand factor.
The previous decade has seen dramatic advances in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer, as genes driving subtypes of the disease including EGFR, ALK, ROS1 and BRAF are paired with drugs that silence their action. However, a major genetic driver of non-small cell lung cancer is still without a targeted treatment.
The gene KRAS is known to be amplified in about 25% of non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) and despite over 10,000 studies related to KRAS listed in the PubMed database and just shy of 500 clinical trials including the search term KRAS at ClinicalTrials.gov, no successful drugs targeting KRAS are in clinical use.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs where the airways become so obstructed the sufferer struggles to breathe. It's vastly more prevalent in Western societies, and usually develops in childhood. But what do we know about what causes it?
Scientists have identified a key molecular player in a subtype of lung cancer which could lead to a new way to tackle the disease, according to research published in Nature Communications.