The effect of ATP on the ciliary activity of normal and pathological human respiratory mucosa in vitro.

The effect of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) on the airway ciliary beating frequency (CBF) of mucosal explants excised from human maxillary sinuses was studied by measuring CBF photoelectrically before and after immersion of the explants in a solution containing ATP. In samples from 64 patients with chronic sinusitis the CBF was not significantly different from the CBF in mucosal specimens from healthy tissue of 22 patients without infection. During 15 min immersion, ATP (1 mg/ml) slightly (by 5%, p less than 0.05 in healthy tissue; by 2.7%, p less than 0.01, in tissue from sinusitis patients) increased the CBF. The effect of 10 mg/ml concentration was more pronounced (19.6%). It is concluded that the impairment in ciliary function caused by chronic sinusitis is reversible when the mucosal endothelium is cleansed of the infected mucus, and that the ciliostimulatory action of ATP seen in animals is also present in human respiratory mucosa.