Bronchoconstriction damages airway epithelia by crowding-induced excess cell extrusion.

Asthma is deemed an inflammatory disease, yet the defining diagnostic feature is mechanical bronchoconstriction. We previously discovered a conserved process called cell extrusion that drives homeostatic epithelial cell death when cells become too crowded. In this work, we show that the pathological crowding of a bronchoconstrictive attack causes so much epithelial cell extrusion that it damages the airways, resulting in inflammation and mucus secretion in both mice and humans.

Bronchoconstriction damages airway epithelia by excess crowding-induced extrusion.

Asthma is deemed an inflammatory disease, yet the defining diagnostic symptom is mechanical bronchoconstriction. We previously discovered a conserved process that drives homeostatic epithelial cell death in response to mechanical cell crowding called cell extrusion(1, 2). Here, we show that the pathological crowding of a bronchoconstrictive attack causes so much epithelial cell extrusion that it damages the airways, resulting in inflammation and mucus secretion.

Number of Siblings in Childhood, Social Outcomes in Adulthood.

In many parts of the world, fertility has declined in important ways in the last century. What are the consequences of this demographic change? Our study expands the empirical basis for understanding the relationship between number of siblings in childhood and social outcomes among adults. An important recent study found that for each additional sibling an individual grows up with, the likelihood of divorce as an adult declines by three percent.

Number of Siblings During Childhood and the Likelihood of Divorce in Adulthood.

Despite fertility decline across economically developed countries, relatively little is known about the social consequences of children being raised with fewer siblings. Much research suggests that growing up with fewer siblings is probably positive, as children tend to do better in school when sibship size is small. Less scholarship, however, has explored how growing up with few siblings influences children's ability to get along with peers and develop long-term meaningful relationships.