Global, regional, and national burden of pulmonary arterial hypertension, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021
Lung Disease News
Mar. 25, 2025 — Researchers have found a potential new way to slow the progression of lung fibrosis and other fibrotic diseases by inhibiting the expression or function of Piezo2, a receptor that senses mechanical ...
Mar. 17, 2025 — In the continuing evolution of personalized medicine, a new study has found evidence to support the value of a tool that measures the presence of cancer-derived molecules in the blood of patients ...
Mar. 13, 2025 — A new study shows how the lungs respond to poor ...
Mar. 13, 2025 — A discovery about how severe COVID-19 damages lung cells suggests that an existing drug could treat lingering respiratory problems not just from COVID but influenza and other respiratory ...
Mar. 12, 2025 — A lung function test used to help diagnose asthma works better in the morning, becoming less reliable throughout the day, researchers have found. Using real world data from 1,600 patients, available ...
Mar. 3, 2025 — A new study sheds light on ventilator-induced lung injury, a complication that gained increased attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a surge in patients requiring mechanical ...
Feb. 27, 2025 — Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to every other organ, and blood-forming stem cells must make about 200 billion new red blood cells each day to keep the oxygen flowing. For many years, ...
Feb. 27, 2025 — Microscopic plastic pollutants drifting through the air are lodging in the lungs of birds, a new study finds. Researchers worldwide are increasingly alarmed by how pervasive these harmful particles ...
Feb. 27, 2025 — For more than 15 years, a pulmonologist has tried to understand the random path of devastation that a rare genetic condition carves through the families it ...
Feb. 25, 2025 — Our organs age at different rates, and a blood test determining how much they've each aged could predict the risk of conditions like lung cancer and heart disease decades later, finds a new ...
Feb. 24, 2025 — Using a four-dimensional microscopy technique, researchers have created 3D video images of mouse lung tissue grown in the laboratory. What they have learned has been nothing short of ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — A discovery offers new hope in the battle against pulmonary fibrosis, a debilitating lung condition that progressively makes it harder for patients to breathe. Scientists have pinpointed proteins in ...
Feb. 18, 2025 — Researchers are tackling neutrophilic asthma, successfully developing one of the first mouse models of the ...
Feb. 14, 2025 — A study has found microscopic particles emitted from certain types of commonly fitted brake pads can be more toxic than those found in diesel vehicle ...
Feb. 10, 2025 — Scientists uncover an enzyme that boosts cancer cell metabolism to fuel growth. The enzyme, GUK1, supports metabolism in cancer cells to help tumors ...
Feb. 6, 2025 — Despite new medication, cystic fibrosis often leads to permanent lung damage. Researchers have discovered that the disease causes changes in the immune system early in life, presumably even in ...
Feb. 6, 2025 — Scientists have created a new low-cost, fast response sensor to detect lung cancer biomarkers, paving the way for the development of screening devices to spot the disease even before symptoms occur. ...
Feb. 3, 2025 — Long-term exposure to PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and ozone (O3) air pollution is associated with more hospital admissions for lower respiratory tract infections in ...
Jan. 13, 2025 — Scientists have found that a test to detect circulating tumor DNA can predict lung cancer ...
Jan. 9, 2025 — Researchers have published a prospective, randomized and controlled study on the use of extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) in lung transplantation. The findings could significantly change the ...
Spatial Approaches To Understanding Lung Health And Disease Across Lifespan
Lung diseases encompass a diverse range of disorders, including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), bronchopulmonary dysplasia, pulmonary hypertension, asthma, and cancer. These conditions present complex diagnostic and therapeutic challenges, often manifesting with varied patterns of tissue alteration and anatomic distribution. Recent advances in genetics, omics technologies, and imaging have begun to unravel the complex biological underpinnings of these lung diseases, highlighting the roles of genetic predisposition, environmental exposures, cell communication, cellular aging, and development. However, a detailed understanding of how disease processes vary spatially within lung tissues across different pathologies remains elusive, underscoring the need for specialized spatial analytical approaches.
Spatial analysis techniques preserve and interrogate the architecture of lung tissue, allowing researchers to study not just the presence of specific cells or molecules, but their precise localization and interaction within the tissue microenvironment. These techniques include spatial transcriptomics, imaging mass cytometry, multiplex immunofluorescence, and artificial intelligence-based histological mapping. Such approaches have illuminated the heterogeneity and complexity of lung disease, revealing, for example, the spatial distribution of fibroblastic foci in IPF, immune cell niches in lung cancer, and early changes in small airway architecture in COPD.
In lung cancer, the combination of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics has revealed significant spatial heterogeneity in immune cell infiltration and tumor-immune interactions, highlighting potential therapeutic targets. Similarly, imaging mass cytometry has provided a detailed view of the fibrotic progression in chronic lung allograft dysfunction. Spatial transcriptomics has also been employed to map molecular alterations in distinct alveolar niches in IPF, advancing our understanding of disease progression and potentially guiding targeted treatment strategies.
Spatial context not only helps characterize disease mechanisms and progression but also supports the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. For example, spatial biomarkers can offer prognostic insight or inform patient stratification in clinical trials. Integration of multi-omics data with spatially resolved imaging allows a comprehensive analysis of molecular and cellular networks in diseased lungs.
This Research Topic aims to enhance the understanding and management of lung disease by disseminating knowledge, discoveries, and best-practices of advanced spatial analysis techniques. By focusing on the unique anatomic attributes of lung tissue associated with various pulmonary disorders, the goal is to highlight emerging themes in respiratory disease research while underscoring the contextual anatomy of the lung. Employing sophisticated imaging and omics technologies allows researchers to visualize and analyze molecular and cellular interactions within specific lung regions affected by disease.
In pursuit of broadening our knowledge on the spatial aspects of lung diseases, this Research Topic is open to submissions that showcase innovative research and technology in the following areas:
o Spatially-resolved transcriptomics approaches across different lung conditions;o Imaging techniques for detailed lung disease staging;o Single-cell and single-nucleus genomic and epigenetic mapping;o Techniques for dissecting lung tissue into specific compartments for detailed study;o Proteomic and metabolomic landscape mapping in diseased lung tissues;o Integrative methods for combining spatial omics data and imaging within anatomical lung structures;o Novel diagnostic tools based on spatial analysis in lung disease research.
Article types and feesThis Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.
Keywords: Lung Diseases, Spatial Analysis, Genetics, Imaging Techniques, Omics Technologies
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Near Westside Residents Have Higher Rates Of Lung Disease, Study Says
By Enrique Saenz, Mirror Indy
Mirror Indy is a part of Free Press Indiana, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to ensuring all Hoosiers have access to the news and information they need.
Sandy Leeds remembers the glory days of West Indianapolis.
Now 80 years old, she was born in 1944 and lived in a post-war era she remembers as prosperous — her neighborhood a hot spot for manufacturing and other industries.
As a young girl, Leeds would watch her father set off for work at the Kingan and Co. meat packing plant on foot. The plant was located about a mile from the neighborhood until it burned down in the late 1960s.
But the proximity to work meant they were also close to the pollution being emitted out of smokestacks at facilities that surrounded the residential areas, like the former Reilly Tar & Chemical plant, the Olin Brass Indianapolis plant, the Chrysler Foundry and the General Motors stamping plant.
"We could smell the smoke," Leeds remembered. "We could also smell other things that were going on, not knowing what they were, because this was normal and common."
West Indianapolis resident Sandy Leeds at a meeting of the West Indianapolis Neighborhood Congress May 10, 2025. Credit: Enrique Saenz/Mirror Indy
A new report by the Marion County Public Health Department suggests that the glory days of the west side came with a hidden cost for those who live there. The study found that residents on Indy's near west side are more likely to develop lung disease or cancer. They're also more likely than others across the county to visit the emergency room for breathing problems.
For Leeds, the report confirmed something she long feared. Some health problems are worse in her part of the city.
Her mother had Alzheimer's disease, her father had lung cancer and, despite being a nonsmoker, she has lung damage that kept her hospitalized for nine days last year. She attributes her family's health problems and those of many other neighborhood families to the area's industrial past.
"This was more than 50 years ago, and yet I'm affected," Leeds said. "When I'm working at home, all of a sudden my breathing gets worse, and I'm not doing anything."
Higher risk for health problems
Area of study. Credit: Marion County Public Health Department
The meat packing plant where Leeds' father worked was later transformed into White River State Park and Victory Field. But the area's industrial legacy remains.
The neighborhood is home to some of the consistently highest emitters of particulate matter pollution, which is linked to decreased lung functions, an increased risk of heart problems, such as heart attacks and dementia.
The department's health assessment looked at hospital data from westside residents living in the 46241 and 46221 ZIP codes and four census tracts in between the two areas.
The study looked at the latest available data for hospitalizations for respiratory conditions, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and dementia. All are conditions that are closely associated with environmental exposure to benzene, pyridines and ammonia — chemicals emitted by the former chemical plant at 1500 South Tibbs Avenue that closed last year. The plant is now the subject of an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup set to begin this summer.
Credit: Marion County Public Health Department
According to the report, the near westside area had a nearly 40% higher incidence rate of lung cancer diagnoses compared to the rest of the state between 2016 and 2020 and about a 39% higher lung cancer death rate than the rest of Marion County between 2003 and 2022.
The report also found a 28.5% higher rate of emergency room visits than the rest of the county between 2019 and 2023 for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung condition that makes it difficult to breathe, and about a 20% higher rate of hospitalizations for lung cancer between 2017 and 2021.
But while many of these health problems are linked to industrial pollutants, the study itself stopped short of determining the cause.
Funding issuesLeeds wants to know what is causing the health disparities and how many people were affected over decades, but that's not something the study addressed.
That type of study would take lots of money and time to accomplish.
"There's always limitations with epidemiological studies, and that's one of the challenges we have is, you know, there's confounding variables, there's biases, there's difficulty in obtaining certain data. And you know, doing in-person surveys takes a massive amount of man hours," said Jason Ravenscroft, administrator of the MCPHD Department of Water Quality and Hazardous Materials Management at a May 10 meeting of the West Indianapolis Neighborhood Congress.
Those types of studies were previously funded, at least in part, by federal environmental justice grants, but distribution of those grants are in danger due to the Trump administration's rollback of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives.
As part of the rollback, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency closed the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which, among other things, helped distribute those grants. The EPA has also canceled nearly 800 environmental justice grants for things like pollution monitoring, prevention and cleanup in communities experiencing similar healthy disparities as West Indianapolis.
Help from the state also isn't likely. A budget shortfall caused by lower than expected revenue largely due to the Trump administration's tariffs and fears of a recession resulted in many cuts at the end of this year's legislative session. That includes $60 million for the Health First Indiana program, which provides extra funding for local health departments across the state.
Janet McCabe Credit: U.S. EPA
Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, has also adopted a similar stance to Trump's on environmental justice that could play a role in how the state regulates polluting industries in the future.
Braun issued an executive order on March 12 banning state officials from using considerations including race, ethnicity and educational attainment when making permitting, enforcement or grant decisions.
"Indiana's environmental policy will be based solely on sound science — not a political agenda like 'environmental justice,' " Braun said in a press release. "My environmental policy is all about preserving our abundant natural resources, fostering economic development and safeguarding Hoosiers' health."
But Janet McCabe, a former EPA deputy administrator during the Biden administration, says Trump and Braun's understanding of environmental justice is based on faulty conclusions that could prevent potentially bad living conditions from getting better.
"Environmental justice reflects the fact that some people live in areas that are more polluted than other people, and that that's not fair," McCabe said. "It's not about who they are. It's not about how much money they make. It's not about what color they are. It's about (how) there is more pollution in their neighborhoods than other people have."
What's next?Ravenscroft said the health department is looking into purchasing PurpleAir air quality monitors made to detect particulate matter pollution using a portion of a federal grant it received from the Biden administration. The number of air monitors that will be purchased and the location they would be placed is still being determined.
Need to report a polluter?Residents can file an environmental complaint about a facility to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management online, by calling the department complaint coordinator at 800-451-6027 then selecting option 3 or by mailing a completed IDEM Complaint Form to the agency.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.Saenz@mirrorindy.Org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.Bsky.Social.
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Featured image: An illustration compiles several images of industrial sites that contribute to pollution on the west side of Indianapolis. Credit: Illustration by Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy; Photos by Enrique Saenz and Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy
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