American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Aug 2014
Multicenter Study Clinical TrialGenome-Wide Association Identifies Regulatory Loci Associated with Distinct Local Histogram Emphysema Patterns.
Emphysema is a heritable trait that occurs in smokers with and without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Emphysema occurs in distinct pathologic patterns, but the genetic determinants of these patterns are unknown. ⋯ This study demonstrates for the first time genetic associations with distinct patterns of pulmonary emphysema quantified by computed tomography scan. Enhancer regions are significantly enriched among these GWAS results, with pulmonary fibroblasts among the cell types showing the strongest enrichment.
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Aug 2014
ReviewGetting personal: Perspectives on individualized treatment duration in M/XDR-TB.
Tuberculosis (TB) differs from most other bacterial infectious diseases by a very long duration of combination antibiotic therapy required to achieve relapse-free cure. Although the standard recommended "short-course" treatment length for TB is 6 months, the World Health Organization recommends a duration of 20 months for the treatment of patients with multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB (M/XDR-TB). Apart from the long duration of anti-TB therapy, treatment of M/XDR-TB is very expensive and often associated with adverse drug events. ⋯ Personalization of the duration of treatment for TB, especially for patients with M/XDR-TB, would be highly desired. Until recently there has been little interest in the identification of biosignatures that could eventually lead to individual recommendations for the duration of anti-TB therapy. This pulmonary perspective reviews the knowledge on clinical and radiological scores, host- and pathogen disease-related profiles, molecules, and signatures that are currently explored as biomarkers to personalize the duration of therapy in TB.
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Aug 2014
Risk of Current Asthma Among Adult Smokers with Respiratory Syncytial Virus Illnesses in Early Life.
Risk of subsequent asthma-like symptoms after early-life lower respiratory illness (LRI) caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is increased during the first decade of childhood and diminished thereafter by adolescence. ⋯ Smoking is associated with increased risk of having asthma in young adults who had RSV-LRI in early life but not among subjects without these illnesses.
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Aug 2014
Is Chronic Asthma Associated with Shorter Leukocyte Telomere Length at Midlife?
Asthma is prospectively associated with age-related chronic diseases and mortality, suggesting the hypothesis that asthma may relate to a general, multisystem phenotype of accelerated aging. ⋯ Life-course-persistent asthma is related to a proposed biomarker of accelerated aging, possibly via systemic eosinophilic inflammation. Life histories of asthma can inform studies of aging.