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Insights Into the Role of Mucus Plugging in Asthma
This interview in the latest issue of The Respiratory Report features Stephen Schworer, Md, PhD, discussing the role of mucus plugging in severe asthma.
In recent research, mucus plugging has been shown to play a key role in severe cases of asthma and to be the most common driver of fatal events related to asthma. This role, enhanced by thoracic CT imaging studies of large airways, was explored in new research on the molecular characteristics of the airway epithelium in the peripheral lung.
This study is being led by Stephen Schworer, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Schworer spoke in the second issue of The Respiratory Report, a quarterly newsletter from HCPLive that is powered by the American Lung Association Research Institute, on his team’s current research in this area.
The team hypothesized that asthmatic small airways would exhibit mucus plugging with high expression of MUC5AC, the secreted mucin which is known to be upregulated in the large airway among those with asthma.
To test this hypothesis, we characterized small airways in tissues from fatal asthma cases and biopsies from steroid-resistant severe asthmatics. Using AB-PAS staining, we showed that there is a high mucus plug burden in bronchioles in both cohorts.
“We expand on previous fatal asthma morphology studies by adding the study of biopsies of severe, steroid-resistant asthmatics, and using innovative technologies including spatial transcriptomics and multiplex immunostaining to define the small airway molecular asthmatic phenotype,” Schworer said. “We hypothesized that asthmatic small airways would have mucus plugging with high expression of the MUC5AC, the secreted mucin known to be upregulated in the large airway and asthma. To test this hypothesis, we characterize small airways and tissues from fatal asthma cases and biopsies from steroid resistant severe asthmatics.”
To learn more about Schworer’s research, view the interview above or read his contribution to the second issue of The Respiratory Report here:
Small Airway Mucus Plugging in Severe Asthma: Insights and Implications
