What is it about?
There are many clinical situations in which hospital patients are being put on a mechanical ventilator. Whereas this supportive therapy can be life-saving, the process of forcing air into the lungs can also do damage. Since elderly appear to have worse outcome when being mechanical ventilated, this study explored the effect of aging on the damaging effects of mechanical ventilation. Studying this in mice, our main finding was that the small blood vessels in the lung become leaky during ventilation and that this is worse in aged mice compared to young mice. This difference appears to be due to the cells that line the blood vessels to form a barrier between the blood and the lung tissue.
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Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Most of the work studying the damaging effect of mechanical ventilation has been performed in young mice and rats. By studying these effects in old mice, our study yield novel information that may better reflect the clinical scenarios that affect elderly patients.
Perspectives
The premise of our work is that preclinical animal research should try to accurately reflect various human populations. Aging is one, non-controversial, aspect that we have investigated here but the same applies for many other biological and social differences within the society..... no matter what certain politicians say.
Dr Ruud Veldhuizen
Western University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effect of aging on pulmonary cellular responses during mechanical ventilation, JCI Insight, February 2025, American Society for Clinical Investigation,
DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.185834.
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