IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v434y2005i7034d10.1038_nature03490.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-organized patchiness in asthma as a prelude to catastrophic shifts

Author

Listed:
  • Jose G. Venegas

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Tilo Winkler

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Guido Musch

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Marcos F. Vidal Melo

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Dominick Layfield

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit))

  • Nora Tgavalekos

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Boston University)

  • Alan J. Fischman

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Ronald J. Callahan

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

  • Giacomo Bellani

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit))

  • R. Scott Harris

    (Massachusetts General Hospital, Departments of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology, and Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit)
    Harvard Medical School)

Abstract

Plan of attack A better understanding of the of the physiological changes that occur during an asthma attack could have implications for the treatment of asthma, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in children throughout the world. A new study shows that during an attack, any obstruction in the larger passageway of the lung can trigger a devastating effect in rest of the airway tree. Venegas et al. used positron emission tomography images of lungs to track lung ventilation patterns in asthmatic patients. Self-organizing clusters of restricted passages reduced the airflow to smaller branches, making them more susceptible to collapse. These findings might help to explain why inhaled asthma drugs are not always effective.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose G. Venegas & Tilo Winkler & Guido Musch & Marcos F. Vidal Melo & Dominick Layfield & Nora Tgavalekos & Alan J. Fischman & Ronald J. Callahan & Giacomo Bellani & R. Scott Harris, 2005. "Self-organized patchiness in asthma as a prelude to catastrophic shifts," Nature, Nature, vol. 434(7034), pages 777-782, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:434:y:2005:i:7034:d:10.1038_nature03490
    DOI: 10.1038/nature03490
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03490
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature03490?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laurent Plantier & Sylvain Marchand-Adam & Laurent Boyer & Camille Taillé & Christophe Delclaux, 2015. "Methacholine-Induced Variations in Airway Volume and the Slope of the Alveolar Capnogram Are Distinctly Associated with Airflow Limitation and Airway Closure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(11), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Tilo Winkler & Marcos F Vidal Melo & Luiza H Degani-Costa & R Scott Harris & John A Correia & Guido Musch & Jose G Venegas, 2015. "Estimation of Noise-Free Variance to Measure Heterogeneity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, April.
    3. Georg Jäger & Manfred Füllsack, 2019. "Systematically false positives in early warning signal analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-14, February.
    4. Georg Jäger & Christian Hofer & Marie Kapeller & Manfred Füllsack, 2017. "Hidden early-warning signals in scale-free networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Tatiana Baumuratova & Simona Dobre & Thierry Bastogne & Thomas Sauter, 2013. "Switch of Sensitivity Dynamics Revealed with DyGloSA Toolbox for Dynamical Global Sensitivity Analysis as an Early Warning for System's Critical Transition," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-12, December.
    6. Kiran D’Souza & Bogdan I Epureanu & Mercedes Pascual, 2015. "Forecasting Bifurcations from Large Perturbation Recoveries in Feedback Ecosystems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:434:y:2005:i:7034:d:10.1038_nature03490. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.