Fibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis is a chronic and progressive interstitial lung disease, caused by an immune response to inhaled foreign antigens or allergens. Researchers from Yale's Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine have used single-cell sequencing technology to provide the first high-resolution atlas of this disease, revealing a previously unrecognized immune signature. Their findings were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine .
Fibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis belongs to a category of diseases known as pulmonary fibrosis, which is characterized by inflammation and irreversible scarring in the lungs. Other diseases under this umbrella include idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which is when scarring occurs in the lungs for an unknown reason. Clinically, fibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are hard to distinguish.
"Patients with these diseases can present very similarly," says study lead author Amy Zhao, an MD/Ph.D. (genetics) student in the Kaminski lab at Yale.
"They may have similar symptoms and radiographic imaging, so patients will sometimes have to undergo further workup using invasive biopsies, and therapeutic decisions may be delayed." Utilizing single-cell sequencing, a technology that allows measuring of all the genes expressed in every cell in a sample, Zhao and the Kaminski lab team analyzed over 500,000 peripheral blood mononuclear cells in patients with both di.