Cystic fibrosis drug could help treat pneumonia

Pneumonia is the most common cause of fluid buildup in the lungs. This condition, known as pulmonary edema, results in parts of the airspaces filling with fluid instead of air, which prevents them from doing their job of exchanging gases. Patients struggle to breath and their body can't get enough oxygen. The diagnosis is acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. "Despite cutting-edge medical procedures, roughly 40 percent of patients with ARDS die in intensive care. The problem is that antibiotics, antivirals, and immune modulating therapies rarely work well enough," says study leader Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kuebler, Director of the Institute of Physiology at Charité. "That's why we took a very different approach in our study. Instead of focusing on the pathogen, we focused on strengthening the barrier function of the blood vessels in the lungs." This makes sense, as they are the source of the fluid in pulmonary edema. The lung vessels become permeable, allowing fluid from the blood to flow into the surrounding tissue – and thereby flood the airspaces. 

Reference:

Erfinanda, L. el at,Loss of endothelial CFTR drives barrier failure and edema formation in lung infection and can be targeted by CFTR potentiation,Science Translational Medicine, 10.1126/scitranslmed.abg8577.