Study finds cause of pulmonary fibrosis in failure of stem cells that repair lungs
The study is a major step toward understanding and one day treating pulmonary fibrosis , which affects about 100,000 people in the U.S. The disease often is called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis because, in most cases, the cause cannot be found. While the prognosis is unpredictable, patients typically survive only three to five years after diagnosis, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. "Pulmonary fibrosis slowly robs patients of breath and finally life," said Paul W. Noble, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine and director of the Women's Guild Lung Institute at Cedars-Sinai. "In our study, we identified novel potential pathways to finding treatments for this relentless disease." Noble was the study's principal investigator. The investigators focused on alveoli, the small air sacs at the ends of lung airways. In the alveoli, oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged with blood during respiration. Epithelial cells that line ...