Human Airway Smooth Muscle Cells
Role in Chronic Inflammatory Disorders of the Lung

By Wim Wuyts
December 2003
Leuven University Press
ISBN: 90-5867-351-0
140 pages, Illustrated, 6 ¼" x 9 ½"
$67.50 Paper Original

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This is a Ph.D. dissertation. Because of the worldwide burden of bronchial asthma and the recent increase in the use of lung transplantation as a treatment for end-stage lung disease, the importance of chronic inflammatory airway diseases, such as asthma and obliterative bronchiolitis/ bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (OB/BOS), the clinical manifestation of chronic rejection after lung transplantation, has dramatically increased in the last decade. The first step in controlling these diseases is the unraveling of the basic mechanisms leading to these diseases. Therefore we studied the signal transduction pathways leading from proinflammatory cytokines to chemokines responsible for the attraction of inflammatory cells, which leads to a further development of these diseases. Contents include: Introduction, hypothesis and aims, Role of HASMC in asthmatic inflammation, Role of HASMC in the inflammatory response of OB/BOS after lung transplantation, General discussion and prospects for the future, and Summary.

Respiratory Medicine
Acta Biomedica Lovaniensia, No. 304

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