Structural alterations and markers of endothelial activation in pulmonary and bronchial arteries in fatal asthma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is interest in better understanding vessel pathology in asthma, given the findings of loss of peripheral vasculature associated with disease severity by imaging and altered markers of endothelial activation. To date, vascular changes in asthma have been described mainly at the submucosal capillary level of the bronchial microcirculation, with sparse information available on the pathology of bronchial and pulmonary arteries. The aim of this study was to describe structural and endothelial activation markers in bronchial arteries (BAs) and pulmonary arteries (PAs) of asthma patients who died during a fatal asthma attack. METHODS: Autopsy lung tissue was obtained from 21 smoking and non-smoking patients who died of an asthma attack and nine non-smoking control patients. Verhoeff-Masson trichrome staining was used to analyse the structure of arteries. Using immuno-histochemistry and image analyses, we quantified extracellular matrix (ECM) components (collagen I, collagen III, versican, tenascin, fibronectin, elastic fibres), adhesion molecules [vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1)] and markers of vascular tone/dysfunction [endothelin-1 (ET-1) and angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2)] in PAs and BAs. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in ECM components, ICAM-1, ET-1 or AT2 between asthma patients and controls. Smoking asthma patients presented with decreased content of collagen III in both BA (p = 0.046) and PA (p = 0.010) walls compared to non-smoking asthma patients. Asthma patients had increased VCAM-1 content in the BA wall (p = 0.026) but not in the PA wall. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that the mechanisms linking asthma and arterial functional abnormalities might involve systemic rather than local mediators. Loss of collagen III in the PA was observed in smoking asthma patients, and this was compatible with the degradative environment induced by cigarette smoking. Our data also reinforce the idea that the mechanisms of leukocyte efflux via adhesion molecules differ between bronchial and pulmonary circulation, which might be relevant to understanding and treating the distal lung in 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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".