#lung function

The Lung View

In 1971, Wimbledon in London became home to an imaging revolution – the world’s first CT scan on a patient. CT scans are now commonplace, creating 3D images of organs by capturing multiple X-ray images from different angles. This makes imaging moving organs difficult. In mouse studies of lung disease, researchers have overcome this using retrospective gating (RG), capturing more images of the lungs and grouping them into breathing phases, each reconstructed separately – this takes longer. The organ’s function has been measured using another technique – X-ray-based lung function measurement (XLF). Now, a new faster technique has been developed, RG-based XLF, which measures lung anatomy and function simultaneously. Testing it in healthy and mdx mice, which model Duchenne muscular dystrophy, proved successful. Function and anatomy data (pictured) were captured in just 34 seconds. For example, the abnormal shape and position of the diaphragm in mdx mice (right) was identified when compared with healthy lungs (left).

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image from work by Christian Dullin and colleagues

Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Medical Center Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

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

Published in Scientific Reports, August 2022

Don’t underestimate the importance of using “green” cleaning products.

Women who clean at home or work face increased lung function decline, study finds 

Women who work as cleaners or regularly use cleaning sprays or other cleaning products at home appear to experience a greater decline in lung function over time than women who do not clean, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

In "Cleaning at Home and at Work in Relation to Lung Function Decline and Airway Obstruction," researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway analyzed data from 6,235 participants in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey. The participants, whose average age was 34 when they enrolled, were followed for more than 20 years.

The authors found that the accelerated lung function decline in the women working as cleaners was "comparable to smoking somewhat less than 20 pack- years.

Cleaning may be as dangerous as smoking