#bronchus

Lung and bronchial tree

Harder to Breathe

Strongly associated with smoking and pollution, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) causes serious breathing difficulties, linked to changes in the airways of the lungs. The third leading cause of death worldwide, COPD has historically been more prevalent in men, but this is likely due to higher rates of smoking. In fact, recent work suggests women may be at greater risk, in part because of their inherently smaller airways. Examining lung CT scans (pictured, for a representative non-smoking male, left, and female, right) from nearly 10000 volunteers, both smokers and non-smokers, revealed that women have narrower airways, with thinner walls, even when accounting for body size. Changes in airway properties, such as the same degree of narrowing, thus have worse impacts on breathing capability and survival in women than men. As in other areas of medicine, growing consideration of the specifics of women’s bodies should lead to better prevention and treatment.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)

Research by Surya P. Bhatt et al from the multi centre COPDGene Cohort

Image copyright held by the RSNA

Research published in Radiology, August 2022

Rodent to Recovery

To unpick how a disease works and test new treatments, scientists study animals that can be infected with the same pathogen. For COVID-19, hamsters and mice have been the most useful, but we don't have a detailed understanding of the disease in these animals. Here, we see lung cells from a mouse with COVID-19 – the infected alveolar cells (green) contain a viral protein (red). In hamsters, the virus targets a different type of lung cell in the bronchus, but that's just one of the striking differences in how these two rodents react to COVID-19. Mice die within a week as the infection escapes their lungs to damage other organs. Hamsters restrict the virus to their lungs and successfully fight it off. The effects of COVID-19 vary widely among people too, and these two models capture different aspects of human disease. Understanding them better may bring the next generation of COVID-19 treatments.

Written by Henry Stennett

Image from work by Haengdueng Jeong, Youn Woo Lee, In Ho Park, Hyuna Noh and colleagues

Brain Korea 21 FOUR Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam & Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, November 2022