Clinical vignette: A 76-year-old man consults you for increasing shortness of breath over the past two years and an increasing requirement for home oxygen. A video-assisted thoracoscopic lung biopsy shows findings of usual interstitial pneumonitis, and he has no identifiable cause for pulmonary fibrosis, so he is considered to have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). His diffusing capacity for...

Patients with type 2 diabetes have impaired exercise capacity. While numerous factors are known to contribute to impaired exercise capacity, the role of lung function remains unclear. We conducted the present study to investigate the influence of lung function on exercise capacity in patients with type 2 diabetes. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing was carried out in 31 male patients with type 2 ...

BACKGROUND Systemic lupus involves different body organs including lungs. However, there is limited information on the systemic lupus without respiratory symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide in women with disseminated lupus erythematosus and to compare it with a control group. METHODS This prospective study was conducted dur...

An attempt was made to determine if emphysema and static lung recoil were related in a group of 65 excised human lungs. We studied 23 normal lungs, 24 lungs with an emphysema score of 5 or less, and 18 lungs with an emphysema score greater than 5. A comparison of the percentage of predicted elastic recoil revealed that both emphysema groups were significantly different from normal lungs. In add...

Insufficient alveolar gas exchange capacity is a major contributor to lung disease. During lung development, a population of distal epithelial progenitors first produce bronchiolar-fated and subsequently alveolar-fated progeny. The mechanisms controlling this bronchiolar-to-alveolar developmental transition remain largely unknown. We developed a novel grafting assay to test if lung epithelial p...