Structure and function of small airways in asthma patients revisited

Abstract

Small airways (<2 mm in diameter) are probably involved across almost all asthma severities and they show proportionally more structural and functional abnormalities with increasing asthma severity. The structural and functional alterations of the epithelium, extracellular matrix and airway smooth muscle in small airways of people with asthma have been described over many years using in vitro studies, animal models or imaging and modelling methods. The purpose of this review was to provide an overview of these observations and to outline several potential pathophysiological mechanisms regarding the role of small airways in asthma.

Integrated Genomics Approaches Identify Transcriptional Mediators and Epigenetic Responses to Afghan Desert Particulate Matter in Small Airway Epithelial Cells

“…Despite these advantages, our model system had several limitations. SAECs were cultured and exposed in submerged cell culture without differentiation into a cuboidal ciliated epithelium, which is characteristic of small airways (40). The dose and composition of exposures may also diverge between our model and true inhalational exposures experienced by military personnel deployed to Southwest Asia.…”

Creating a training set for artificial intelligence from initial segmentations of airways

“…Manual correction resulted into a significantly more complete airway segmentation, and retraining the 3D-Unet resulted into improved segmentations, with the greatest changes seen from the 6th generation onwards. Notably, small airways play an important role in lung diseases such as asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis and their accurate detection can be important for the accurate diagnosis and sensitive monitoring of respiratory illness [16,17]. A focus on improving the segmentation of smaller airways could therefore help in the research of bronchial parameters of early disease [18].…”

Codonopsis laceolata Water Extract Ameliorates Asthma Severity by Inducing Th2 Cells’ and Pulmonary Epithelial Cells’ Apoptosis via NF-κB/COX-2 Pathway

“…Changes in the Respiratory System, Which Was Induced by Ovalbumin Treatment Such as Airway Remodeling, Mucous Hypersecretion, Pulmonary Epithelial Cell Hyperplasia, and Inflammatory Cell Infiltration Ovalbumin effectively induced the representative morphological changes in the pulmonary system, which could be observed in asthma patients, such as airway remodeling, mucous hypersecretion, pulmonary epithelial cell hyperplasia, and inflammatory cell infiltration near the bronchioalveolar ducts and the vessels [3,4] (Figure 2(Ab,Bb)) compared to that of the control group (Figure 2(Aa,Ba)). C. laceolata treatment dose-dependently prevented the ovalbumin-induced morphological changes (Figure 2(Ad-f,Bd-f)).…”

“…Ovalbumin effectively induced the representative morphological changes in the pul monary system, which could be observed in asthma patients, such as airway remodeling mucous hypersecretion, pulmonary epithelial cell hyperplasia, and inflammatory cell in filtration near the bronchioalveolar ducts and the vessels [3,4] (Figure 2 In order to clarify the prevention effect of C. laceolata against asthmatic changes, quantitative scoring was conducted according to our previous study [3]. In the vehicle control, the quantitative scores of histopathological changes (mean ± standard deviation) such as mucous hypersecretion, epithelial cell hyperplasia, and inflammatory cell infiltration were 0.1 ± 0.08, 0.2 ± 0.21, and 0.2 ± 0.13, respectively.…”

“…Asthma is an incurable chronic inflammatory disease of the pulmonary system, which is caused by a wide range of allergens [1]. It has several symptoms, such as wheezing, fast and difficult breathing, coughing, and sleep apnea, which can lead to death [2], and representative morphological changes, such as airway remodeling, inflammatory cell infiltration, mucous hypersecretion, and epithelial cell dysfunction/hyperplasia [3,4]. In 2019, it was estimated that there were 262 million asthma patients, and 461 thousand deaths were caused by asthma [5].…”