Airway Smooth Muscle as a Target in Asthma and the Beneficial Effects of Bronchial Thermoplasty
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Airflow within the airways is determined directly by the lumenal area of that airway. In this paper, we consider several factors which can reduce airway lumenal area, including thickening and/or active constriction of the airway smooth muscle (ASM). The latter cell type can also contribute in part to inflammation, another feature of asthma, through its ability to take on a synthetic/secretory phenotype. The ASM therefore becomes a strategically important target in the treatment of asthma, given these key contributions to the pathophysiology of that disease. Pharmacological approaches have been developed to elicit relaxation of the ASM, but these are not always effective in all patients, nor do they address the long-term structural changes which impinge on the airway lumen. The recent discovery that thermal energy can be used to ablate smooth muscle has led to the development of a novel physical intervention-bronchial thermoplasty-in the treatment of asthma. Here, we review the evolution of this novel approach, consider some of the possible mechanisms that account for its salutary effects, and pose new questions which may lead to even better therapies for asthma.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".