Surprising Cystic Fibrosis Finding

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease where the patient has frequent respiratory infections, breathing difficulties and eventually permanent lung damage. It’s believed that patients with CF have too much mucus in their airways. But new research shows patients actually have too little mucus.

“It has always been thought, but never proven, that CF causes the body to produce too much abnormally thick mucus that accumulates in the lungs and intestines, ”says Bruce Rubin, M.D., pediatric pulmonologist at Wake Forest Baptist’s Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C. “However, we have now shown that these patients actually have very little mucus in their airways. This finding could change the way we think about CF treatment.”

For the study, researchers collected sputum from 12 patients with CF and 11 patients without lung disease. Sputum is the mucus that is coughed up when someone has a deep cough. After analyzing the sputum, researchers found the CF patients had less than the healthy participants.

Study authors say the substance that clogs the lungs of CF patients is actually pus. They suspect the airways in CF patients are chronically infected and fill up with pus. They think that by adding mucus, it could reduce the infection and the amount of pus.

“If it turns out that mucus is protective against the bacteria, we may have a treatment for CF,” says Dr. Rubin. “We believe that, by increasing mucus in the airway early on, it may help prevent the infection. This certainly would not be a cure for CF, but it would make a wonderful difference in quality of life while a cure is being sought.”

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SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, 2004;30:1-6