Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.
Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.
NEJM Evid. 2023 Oct;2(10):EVIDe2300179. doi: 10.1056/EVIDe2300179. Epub 2023 Sep 26.
Asthma researchers have long recognized that abnormal mucus production and clearance play a role in the pathophysiology of asthma. Mucus plugs are known to be common in patients with severe asthma, and mucus plug scores, for which higher scores indicate more severe plugging, are directly correlated with airflow obstruction and markers of eosinophilic airway inflammation (i.e., higher scores or marker levels are associated with more severe obstruction). Other work has shown that mucus plugs were associated with distal deficits in regional ventilation as delineated by hyperpolarized gas magnetic resonance imaging..
哮喘病研究人员长期以来一直认识到，异常的黏液产生和清除在哮喘病的病理生理学中起着作用。众所周知，黏液栓在严重哮喘患者中很常见，黏液栓评分越高表明阻塞越严重，与气流阻塞和嗜酸性气道炎症标志物呈直接相关（即，评分或标志物水平越高与更严重的阻塞相关）。其他研究表明，黏液栓与通过超极化气体磁共振成像描绘的区域性通气的远端缺陷有关。
