A University of Georgia College of Engineering professor’s research paper on the mechanism of inflammation in the lungs has been named one of the most popular articles of 2019 by Springer Nature, one of the world’s leading global research publishers.
“A review of inflammatory mechanism in airway diseases,” a study led by Ramana Pidaparti, explores the triggers of inflammatory response in the lungs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Pidaparti and his colleagues found inflammatory response in COPD patients is determined by the activation of the epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract and macrophages, a type of white blood cell.
“In this study, we wanted to better understand the inflammatory mechanism in airway diseases and highlight the influence of aging on airways’ inflammatory mechanism,” said Pidaparti, a professor in the School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering. “Our main goal is to encourage research collaborations from diverse groups to promote understanding of the physiological and pathological mechanisms that control inflammation in different airway diseases.”
Collaborations among computational modelers, experimentalists, and clinicians will help further address the complex mechanisms of inflammation in many respiratory diseases, according to Pidaparti.
In addition to Pidaparti, the research team includes Parya Aghasafari and Israr Ibrahim, recent Ph.D. graduates from the UGA College of Engineering, and Uduak George, an assistant professor of mathematics at San Diego State University.
The National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health supported this research.
The study is available here.