Emerging pharmacological strategies for treating and preventing mpox.

Introduction: Since May 2022, there have been nearly 87,000 documented cases of mpox worldwide, with 119 deaths. Pharmacological interventions for mpox include the MVA-BN smallpox vaccine, tecovirimat, cidofovir, its pro-drug brincidofovir, and vaccinia immune globulin intravenous (VIGIV).

Areas Covered: The literature search and information gathering for this review included the PubMed database focusing on mpox and monkeypox, in combination with tecovirimat, brincidofovir, cidofovir, VIGIV, and smallpox vaccine.

Airway Sensory Nerve Density Is Increased in Chronic Cough.

Chronic cough is characterized by frequent urges to cough and a heightened sensitivity to inhaled irritants. Airway sensory nerves trigger cough. We hypothesized that sensory nerve density is increased in chronic cough, which may contribute to excessive and persistent coughing.

Eosinophils increase airway sensory nerve density in mice and in human asthma.

In asthma, airway nerve dysfunction leads to excessive bronchoconstriction and cough. It is well established that eosinophils alter nerve function and that airway eosinophilia is present in 50 to 60% of asthmatics. However, the effects of eosinophils on airway nerve structure have not been established.

Eosinophil and airway nerve interactions in asthma.

Airway eosinophils are increased in asthma and are especially abundant around airway nerves. Nerves control bronchoconstiction and in asthma, airway hyperreactivity (where airways contract excessively to inhaled stimuli) develops when eosinophils alter both parasympathetic and sensory nerve function. Eosinophils release major basic protein, which is an antagonist of inhibitory M muscarinic receptors on parasympathetic nerves.

Tissue optical clearing, three-dimensional imaging, and computer morphometry in whole mouse lungs and human airways.

In whole adult mouse lung, full identification of airway nerves (or other cellular/subcellular objects) has not been possible due to patchy distribution and micron-scale size. Here we describe a method using tissue clearing to acquire the first complete image of three-dimensional (3D) innervation in the lung. We then created a method to pair analysis of nerve (or any other colabeled epitope) images with identification of 3D tissue compartments and airway morphometry by using fluorescent casting and morphometry software (which we designed and are making available as open-source).