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Once upon a time it was infectious diseases like polio, measles or tuberculosis that most worried parents. With these threats now largely under control, parents face a new challenge – sky-rocketing rates of non-infectious diseases such as asthma, allergies and autism.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex disorder with a high degree of interindividual variability. Gastrointestinal dysfunction is common in patients with COPD and has been proposed to influence the clinical progression of the disease. Using the presence of bile acid(s) (BA) in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid as a marker of gastric aspiration, we evaluated the relationships between BAs, clinical outcomes and bacterial lung colonisation.
Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that selectively kill bacteria and offer a promising option to address the growing global pandemic of antimicrobial-resistant infections. However, phage therapy does not easily align with traditional regulatory pathways designed for fixed-composition chemical drugs or biologics with fixed non-evolving compositions.
Wheezing and asthma exacerbations are leading causes of pediatric hospital admissions. Predicting which children will experience persistent exacerbations remains challenging. Prior research has identified immune endotypes in the nasal epithelium of children with acute asthma and wheezing, characterized by varying balances of interferons and inflammatory markers. Notably, children exhibiting low interferon responses coupled with high inflammation are at an increased risk for recurrent respiratory exacerbations.
Sometimes, there is an urgent need to administer inhaled adrenaline to children, awake, sedated or anaesthetised to treat asthma, bronchospasm, croup, and suspected laryngeal/pharyngeal oedema or stridor, which can become severe or even life-threatening. To better inform emergency dosing and administration guidelines, we aimed to quantify the amount of adrenaline delivered for inhalation from a nebuliser, in a simulated experimental delivery set-up for spontaneously breathing children and adults, either via an anaesthetic face mask, a Laryngeal Mask Airway or an Endotracheal tube.
Amniotic epithelial cells are fetal-derived stem cells, capable of differentiating into all three germ layers, including mature epithelial cell populations. Here, we hypothesised that the amniotic epithelium might serve as a surrogate tissue source for investigating transcriptional profiles in the respiratory epithelium of newborns.
he increasing adoption of high-throughput "omics" technologies has heightened the demand for standardized, scalable, and reproducible bioinformatics workflows. Nextflow and nf-core provide a robust framework for researchers, particularly early- and mid-career researchers (EMCRs), to navigate complex data analysis.
In cystic fibrosis, bacteria–bacteriophage interaction in the lower airways is poorly understood. We present the near-complete genome of the uncultured Siphovirus-like bacteriophage, Staphylococcus aureus phage COMBAT-CF_PAR1, isolated from the lower airways. The genome spans 41,510 bp with 33.45% guanine–cytosine content and contains 65 open reading frames.
Burkholderia cepacia complex is a cause of serious lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis, exhibiting extremely high levels of antimicrobial resistance. These infections are difficult to treat and are associated with high morbidity and mortality.
A The Kids Research Institute Australia study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health has found that survivors of very preterm birth face declining lung function