Thorax Podcast

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Paolo Macchiarini (professor in the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm) about using bioartificial scaffolds to replace complex airway defects.

Professor Macchiarini was part of a team who replaced the airway of a tracheal cancer patient with a tailor-made bioartificial scaffold. Their paper was recently published in the Lancet:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961715-7/abstract#cor1 ,

Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with an increased prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and its components. Professor SK Sharma (head of the Department of Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences) has investigated whether treatment of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) would modify these outcomes. Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s Journal Club editor) speaks to him about his results recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

See also:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103944

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s Journal Club editor) talks to Onno Mets (Department of Radiology, University Medical Centre Utrecht) about his paper recently published in JAMA:

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1104554

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Ann Joseph (Wexler Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota) about whether treating tobacco dependence as a chronic condition results in better short and long term quit rates.

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s Journal Club editor) talks to Frank McKeon (Genome Institute of Singapore, Harvard Medical School) about his work into the extent of lung regeneration following catastrophic damage and the potential role of adult stem cells. Dr McKeon’s latest paper, published in Cell, examines airway regeneration in mice after H1N1 influenza infection.

See also:

http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2811%2901173-1

Many treatments available for smoking cessation are unaffordable for the majority of smokers, however cytisine is one exception. Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Robert West (Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London) about the mechanism of the drug and his research into its efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Professor West’s trial was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

See also:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1102035

Only one treatment is licensed for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and this only in Europe. Luca Richeldi (Center for Rare Lung Diseases, University of Modena, Italy) describes his phase 2 trial of a tyrosine kinase inhibitor to see if it could be safely and effectively used in patients with the disease. Dr Richeldi’s research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

See also:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103690

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Pallav Shah (a respiratory physician at the Royal Brompton Hospital, UK) about his trial of airway bypass for patients with severe emphysema, recently published in the Lancet.

Dr Shah explains the procedure and how effective it was.

See also:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961050-7/abstract

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Dr John Matthews (Genentech) about his New England Journal of Medicine published study into whether lebrikizumab, an interleukin-13 monoclonal antibody, can improve asthma control.

Dr Matthews explains the proposed mechanism behind the treatment and how they found it increased FEV1 in adults for whom inhaled glucocorticoids didn’t control their asthma - especially in those with high periostin levels.

Dr Matthews was involved in the Milly trial. This podcast is intended for healthcare professionals only.

See also:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1106469

In this inaugural Thorax journal club podcast, Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Dr Andres Floto (University of Cambridge) about how he’s confirmed long-term use of azithromycin in cystic fibrosis patients can lead to increased nontuberculous mycobacteria infections. Having recently had this work published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations, Dr Floto also explains the underlying machanism he identified for this.

See also:

http://www.jci.org/articles/view/46095