Airway mucus impaction

Abstract

Provided herein are, inter alia, methods and systems for detecting mucus in the lungs of a subject. Aspects provide methods and systems for the diagnosis, prognosis, characterization, detection, and treatment of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and type 2 inflammation.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62 / 336,376, filed May 13, 2016, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety and for all purposes.STATEMENT AS TO RIGHTS TO INVENTIONS MADE UNDER FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT[0002]This invention was made with government support under grant no. U10 HL109146, awarded by the National Institutes of Health. The government has certain rights in the invention.INCORPORATION-BY-REFERENCE OF SEQUENCE LISTING[0003]The content of the text file named “48536-587001WO_SequenceListing.txt”, which was created on May 12, 2017, and is 9,807 bytes in size, is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND[0004]Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common lung diseases that cause a large public health burden. The treatments available for asthma and COPD are suboptimal and many patients have unmet treatment needs. The pathologi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent is about methods and compositions for detecting, diagnosing, and treating asthma and COPD using lung imaging to quantify mucus plugging. This allows for non-invasive and accurate diagnosis and personalized treatment strategies. The described methods and systems make use of lung imaging as a test to personalize treatment for patients with asthma or COPD who have airflow obstruction from mucus plugging.

Problems solved by technology

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common lung diseases that cause a large public health burden.

The treatments available for asthma and COPD are suboptimal and many patients have unmet treatment needs.

Detecting mucus plugs in the airways is difficult because they are not visible on chest x rays and they are frequently not associated with any symptoms of cough or sputum production.

Because of the difficulty in identifying patients with mucus plugs in their lungs, it has been difficult to direct mucoactive treatments to this patient subgroup.

The inability to easily identify patients with lung mucus plugs has also made it difficult to design clinical trials to test mucoactive drugs in lung disease.

Biomarkers are needed to direct treatment in asthma, but blood measures of inflammatory proteins have yielded limited results.

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