Airway epithelial cilia protect the mammalian respiratory system from harmful inhaled materials by providing the force necessary for effective mucociliary clearance. Ciliary beating is asymmetric, composed of clearly distinguished effective and recovery strokes. Neither the importance of nor the essential components responsible for the beating asymmetry has been directly elucidated. We report h...

Motile cilia mediate the flow of mucus and other fluids across the surface of specialized epithelia in metazoans. Efficient clearance of peri-ciliary fluids depends on the precise coordination of ciliary beating to produce metachronal waves. The role of individual dynein motors and the mechanical feedback mechanisms required for this process are not well understood. Here we used the ciliated ep...

Airway nitric oxide concentrations in patients with cystic fibrosis or primary ciliary dyskinesia syndrome have been shown to be lower than in healthy subjects. Decreased NO concentrations may contribute to impaired ciliary clearance, respiratory tract infections, or obstructive lung disease in these conditions. Nasal and exhaled NO concentrations were compared before and after infusion of 500 ...

Chronic oral candidiasis has been described in association with abnormalities of the endocrine system on many occasions, both in case reports (Sutphin, Albright, and McCune, 1943), and more general reviews (Kunin et al, 1963). Chronic candidiasis has also been recorded in the familial thymic aplasia described by Nezelof (Nezelof et al, 1964), Swiss-type agammaglobulinaemia (Hitzig, 1968) and Di...

The last two decades has seen progress in the development of potential mucoadhesive carriers for assisting with the oral and nasal administration of drugs based around the polysaccharide chitosan. This progress has been underpinned by the development of molecular assays for mucoadhesiveness focusing on the mucin component of mucus. We review the developments based around molecular or biophysica...

BACKGROUND Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a clinically uniform entity, but cilia motility and structure can vary between patients, making the diagnostic difficult. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing PCD of a system of high-resolution digital high-speed video analysis with proprietary software that we developed for analysis of ciliary motilit...

A 5-month old puppy with muco-cutaneous lesions in the chin, around lips and eyes was examined physically and microscopically for leishmaniasis. Muco-cutaneous lesions containing a large number of amastigotes of Leishmania spp. were observed. Amastigotes were also detected in liver and spleen of the puppy. The animal was positive with Dipstick rK39 kit and high level of anti-Leishmania antibodi...

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder associated with severely impaired mucociliary clearance caused by defects in ciliary structure and function. Although recurrent bacterial infection of the respiratory tract is one of the major clinical features of this disease, PCD airway microbiology is understudied. Despite the differences in pathophysiology, assumptions abou...

Spherical monodisperse ferromagnetic iron oxide particles of 1.9 microm geometric and 4.2 microm aerodynamic diameter were inhaled by seven patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) using the shallow bolus technique, and compared to 13 healthy non-smokers (NS) from a previous study. The bolus penetration front depth was limiting to the phase1 dead space volume. In PCD patients deposition w...

This article summarizes the current state of the scientific and clinical knowledge that relates to primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). Although PCD is a rare disease with a prevalence of 1 in 20,000 it has a well recognized morbidity. It is believed that an accurate diagnosis and the application of appropriate management can significantly reduce this morbidity. The cilia themselves are highly com...