Publications by authors named "Merte Lemma"
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), one of the most common forms of interstitial lung disease, is a poorly understood, chronic, and often fatal fibroproliferative condition with only two FDA-approved medications. Understanding the pathobiology of the fibroblast in IPF is critical to evaluating and discovering novel therapeutics. Using a decellularized lung matrix derived from patients with IPF, we generate three-dimensional hydrogels as in vitro models of lung physiology and characterize the phenotype of fibroblasts seeded into the hydrogels.
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- Respiratory viral infections (RVI) in lung transplant recipients (LTRs) can lead to chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD), and elevated levels of donor-derived cell-free DNA (%ddcfDNA) during RVI may predict CLAD progression.
- A study involving 39 LTRs tracked %ddcfDNA and lung function over one year, finding that high %ddcfDNA correlated with significantly greater declines in lung function and increased rates of progression or failure compared to those with low levels.
- The findings suggest that measuring %ddcfDNA at the time of RVI is a more reliable indicator of how well LTRs will recover lung function, compared to traditional histopathology assessments.
Pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive, fatal manifestation of Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS). Some patients with advanced HPS pulmonary fibrosis undergo lung transplantation despite their disease-associated bleeding tendency; others die while awaiting donor organs. The objective of this study is to determine the clinical management and outcomes of a cohort with advanced HPS pulmonary fibrosis who were evaluated for lung transplantation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive disorder that is marked by an over accumulation of activated fibroblast populations. Despite the improved understanding of many mechanisms within this disease, global gene expression analysis has few focused studies on the fibroblast, the central effector cell of progressive fibrosis. We present a unique analysis of IPF pulmonary fibroblasts as they transition through cell culture and identify in vitro altered cellular processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Sildenafil was the only phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor available for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) until the approval and availability of once-daily tadalafil. Since no direct comparative study is likely to be performed between these agents, we sought to evaluate the feasibility of transitioning stable PAH patients from sildenafil to tadalafil.
Methods: The primary end point was continuation on tadalafil without clinical deterioration.