O12‐3: Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an active process in smokers, patients with small airway disease and COPD: Implications for small airway fibrosis and obliteration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims: We previously investigated that EMT is active in patients with chronic airflow limitation. We now further illustrate EMT changes in a wider demographic patient group consisting of COPD current and ex-smokers (COPD-CS, COPD-ES), small airway disease (SAD) and normal lung function smokers (NLFS) compared to normal controls (NC). Methods: Surgically resected small airway (SA) tissue from all pathological groups and NC was immunostained for mesenchymal proteins S100A4, Vimentin and N-cadherin, and epithelial marker E-cadherin. These proteins were quantified in the SA epithelium as per mm of reticular basement membrane (Rbm) or percentage staining. All tissue analysis was done blindly with Image-ProPlus 7.0. Results: E-cadherin markedly decreased across all pathological groups with minimal intergroup variability compared to NC (p<0.01). SA epithelium was significantly positive for both Vimentin and S100A4 in NLFS (p<0.01), SAD (p<0.001) and COPD groups (p<0.001) than NC, albeit COPD-ES tended back to normal levels. Likewise, epithelial N-cadherin level was upregulated in all pathological groups, particularly in SAD (p<0.05) and COPD-CS (p<0.005) compared to NC. Rbm Vimentin +ive cells showed a similar trend to epithelium across all pathological groups (p<0.01), however, such changes were only observed for NLFS and COPD-ES regarding S100A4 (p<0.04). Vimentin and S100A4 epithelium and Rbm expression negatively correlated with E-cadherin expression (p<0.01). Conclusions: EMT is an active process in the SA of smokers and COPD patients potentially contributing to SA fibrosis and obliteration seen in these patients. This is the first study to show such changes in well phenotyped individuals.
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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 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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) | 0.002 | 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".