Mucociliary clearance velocities in human and rat bronchial airways were calculated in asymmetric, multiple-path models of the bronchial tree by solving mass transport equations based on the assumption of conservation of mucus volume and normalized to measured tracheal mucus velocities of 5.5 mm/min for humans and 1.9 mm/min for rats. Mucus velocities in single airways of the rat lung exhibited...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The efficiency of mucociliary transport may vary in different conditions, such as in exposure to harmful particles of the cigarette smoke. The present study evaluated the acute and short term effects of smoking on nasal mucociliary clearance in current smokers by the quantification of the Saccharin Transit Time (STT), and to investigate its correlation with the history...

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a common condition associated with cardiovascular risk. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is an effective treatment but associated with nasal side effects, which hinder compliance and may result from inflammation. . Published on March 9, 2012 as doi: 10.1183/09031936.00199911 ERJ Express Copyright 2012 by the European Respiratory Society. 2 We investig...

Tracheal transplantation remains a challenge for General Thoracic Surgery. A large number of surgical techniques and implantable devices has been tested with poor results. In spite of that, some recent findings on tracheal revascularization and graft epithelial replacement have renewed the interest on tracheal transplantation, with special attention to graft bioengineering. However, in order to...

To examine the effect of adenosine A(3) receptor stimulation on airway mucociliary clearance, we measured transport of Evans blue dye in rabbit trachea in vivo and ciliary motility of epithelium by the photoelectric method in vitro. Mucociliary transport was enhanced dose dependently by the selective A(3) agonist N(6)-(3-iodobenzyl)-5'-N-methylcarbamoyladenosine (IB-MECA) and to a lesser extent...

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a common condition associated with cardiovascular risk. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is an effective treatment but is associated with nasal side-effects, which hinder compliance and may result from inflammation. We investigated whether CPAP was pro-inflammatory to human subjects in vivo, and to cultured bronchial epithelial cells in vitro. In vivo, we f...

Airway inflammation characterized by neutrophils and free elastase contributes to allergic mucociliary dysfunction. Glucocorticosteroids are the most important anti-inflammatory agents used in the treatment of asthma, but their effect on allergic mucociliary dysfunction is not known. Therefore, we assessed both the prophylactic and therapeutic effects of the glucocorticosteroid budesonide on an...