Actor and pancreatic cancer patient Patrick Swayze's recent hospitalization with pneumonia as a result of his compromised immune system underscores the sensitivity of the lungs: many patients die from lung complications of a disease, rather than the disease itself.
Lungs are delicate and exposed to the environment, almost like an open wound. Consequently, the body has developed an elaborate immuno-defense system to combat inhaled pathogens and bacteria - in a healthy individual, this system effectively blocks hundreds of potentially sickening assaults daily.
It works like this: airway epithelial cells initiate an immune response to inhaled bacteria by signaling for white blood cells to move from the bloodstream into the lungs and airway to fight potential infection.
For the first time, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have demonstrated that this signaling cascade includes the activation of epithelial proteases, a type of enzyme capable of opening the junctions between the cells in the airway mucosa, to enable the white blood cells to get through to the site of the infection. The opening of these junctions is initiated by a change in calcium levels.
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