Mucus may inhibit cystic fibrosis

For years, doctors have blamed the life-threatening lung infections suffered by those with cystic fibrosis, or CF, on the excess production of airway mucus. That notion has never been proven conclusively. Now researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say the problem may actually be the opposite: too little airway mucus.

For years, doctors have blamed the life-threatening lung infections suffered by those with cystic fibrosis, or CF, on the excess production of airway mucus. That notion has never been proven conclusively. Now researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say the problem may actually be the opposite: too little airway mucus.If the research bears out – the study was small – it could lead the way to more effective treatments for the disorder, which affects about 30,000 children and adults in the United States. The study appears in the July 1 online issue of the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.While mucus normally lubricates and protects the respiratory system, those with CF have chronic coughs and infections, and it has been assumed the airways were too full of mucus. But the new thinking is, “Mucus is good for you, it’s your friend,” says Dr. Bruce Rubin, a professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest and a corresponding author on the study. “The problem in cystic fibrosis is it doesn’t get into the airway. It may be made in the cell, but not getting out of the cells into the airway. If it goes out into the airway, it would prevent the infection in the first place.”Researchers collected sputum from 12 patients with cystic fibrosis and 11 without the lung disease, then analyzed the contents.Those with CF had substantially less of the two major proteins that form mucus, called MUC5AC and MUC5B, than those with healthy lungs.The substance clogging the lungs of the CF patients isn’t mucus at all, they suggest. “What’s in the cystic fibrosis lung is basically pus,” Rubin says. “It’s a lot of inflammatory cells, broken down.”REACHING THROUGH TEACHING: People in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease might have more capacity to learn new things than previously thought.The findings may eventually make life easier for patient and caretaker alike. They are the result of two new studies supported by the National Institute on Aging, or NIA.The first study, appearing in the July-August issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, involved 44 people all taking cholinesterase inhibitor drugs who were placed at random into one of two groups. The first group attended 45-minute “cognitive rehabilitation” sessions twice a week for 12 weeks.The lessons included learning to associate names with facial features – for example, Smiling Sam – ways to make change for a purchase and how to use a calculator to balance a checkbook after paying three bills.The second group played computer games requiring memory, concentration and problem-solving skills. They also did crossword puzzles and word scrambles.People in the cognitive rehabilitation group showed, on average, a 170 percent improvement in their ability to recall faces and names and a 71 percent improvement in their ability to provide the right change for a purchase. The study shows that the improvements remained three months later, and more recent data show they are still present after six months. The second study, which appeared in the June 10 issue of Neuron, involved 34 young adults, 33 older adults without any symptoms of Alzheimer’s and 24 older adults with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s.They were looking at a type of “implicit” or subconscious memory, which helps people act faster on items they are familiar with than on new items.All of the groups were faster when asked to categorize repeated words rather than new ones, indicating that this ability remains intact in people with early Alzheimer’s. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, indicated the brain did not have to work as hard when a word was repeated.(Source: L.A. Daily, July 2004)