Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/mesh/D001195"

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a chronic lung condition of extremely premature neonates. In most cases BPD is a treatable condition, however it is still a major complication in neonatal intensive care. Inflammatory processes have been strongly linked to BPD pathophysiology. NF-κB is a transcription factor family, which is associated with immunity and cell stress responses. We assessed the association of NF-κB and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, elucidated the NF-κB activity during development of BPD and compared NF-κB activity in BPD and adult idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Methods: We assessed NF-κB activity with immunohistochemical methods. Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) (n=7) and BPD (n=7) samples were gathered in autopsies. IPF (n=6) samples were taken from explanted lungs in transplant surgeries. Results: NF-κB activity in the RDS group was 0 %, whereas in the BPD group it was 57 %. 66 % of the samples in the IPF group were NF-κB active. NF-κB activity was significantly higher at a bronchiolar level in the BPD group compared to the RDS group (p= 0.024), no significant difference was observed at an alveolar level. BDP and IPF samples were similar when comparing bronchiolar level activity, but at an alveolar level, IPF samples were more active, although this failed to reach statistical significance (p=0.113). Conclusion: Our study does not implicate a central role for NF-κB in BPD pathophysiology. NF-κB activity, however, increased from RDS to BPD, which might underlie the disease development. IPF samples contained same pattern of NF-κB activity than BPD samples indicating that a similar mechanism could be driving fibrosis in both BPD and IPF. This is a new insight, since typically, inflammatory processes and NF-κB have not been associated with IPF.