World No Tobacco Day

Every year, on 31 May, WHO and partners mark World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), highlighting the health and additional risks associated with tobacco use, and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption.

The theme for this year's World No Tobacco Day is "Tobacco – a threat to development." It proposes measures that governments and the public should take to promote health and development by confronting the global tobacco crisis.¹

  

The harmful effects of tobacco smoke exposure are well documented. Yet research is still necessary to understand the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms and there is a pressing need for new therapeutic agents to treat patients. Scientific evidence is also needed to understand the risks associated with vapour exposure from electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in order to guide the decision-making process for the use of these nicotine delivery devices. The rapid adoption of e-cigarettes, especially amongst the youth, has spurred a rush to fill the knowledge gap pertaining to the safety profile for the users and the environment.

SCIREQ Related Products for
Tobacco Studies, E-Cigarettes & Vaping

The inExpose is a versatile, programmable, and compact exposure system that can be configured with smoke generation devices (e.g. cigarette smoking robot, single cigarette chamber, e-cigarettes), or nebulizers to generate a wide range of exposures consistently within and between studies, as well as across laboratories.

The E-cigarette extension is designed for the push button 3rd generation “MOD” e-cigarettes. This extension allows for longer exposures due to a larger tank, offers automated activation, custom puff profiles, and temperature control of the vapour produced.

The flexiVent system combines a wide selection of lung function measurements within a single device, while offering the sensitivity to capture small but significant changes. Overall and detailed respiratory mechanics, specific lung volumes, pressure-volume or flow-volume loops are examples of measurements used in tobacco or e-cigarette related studies with some outcomes (FEV, lung volumes) also having a translational value. 

To learn more about our products and how they may provide insight into tobacco related diseases or other applications, please contact [email protected].

References 

¹World Health Organization. "Tobacco - a threat to development" http://www.who.int/campaigns/no-tobacco-day/2017/en/

ATS 2017 - Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who visited our booth at ATS 2017 in Washington last week! It was a successful conference and we look forward to seeing you all again next year.

We also had a great time celebrating the 20th anniversary of the flexiVent during our yearly breakfast event.  A special THANK YOU to our presenters! It was due to their contribution, that the event was well attended and received very positive feedback. 

We are looking forward to future scientific and technological advances that will help researchers learn and better understand pulmonary function.

Your SCIREQ Team!

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) relates to the sudden and unexplained death of infants, typically during sleep. The cause is currently unknown, although it is thought to be linked to the neuronal control of breathing, particularly to the infant’s ability to respond to external stressors. It is also recognized that environmental factors (e.g. sleeping position, surface material, room temperature, second-hand smoke exposure) can increase the risk, along with other factors such as respiratory infections, gestational age at birth, or genetic disorders.

Changes in the breathing pattern can be an early indicator of the infants’ cardiovascular and respiratory systems inability to respond to external stresses, such as elevated CO2¹.  In preclinical research, breathing patterns can be tracked in conscious and unrestrained subjects for extended time periods using whole body plethysmography. This can be done in absence or presence of known external stressors, making this system an ideal tool to study SIDS models. Inserts are also available for neonate subjects so that ventilatory parameters can be studied as early as 2-3 days after birth.

Approximately 10-15% of all SIDS cases can be linked to ion channel mutations leading to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. Electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings can track the onset of ectopic beats and ventricular tachycardia, which can directly lead to sudden death². Invasive or surface ECG recordings can be used to detect and quantify arrhythmias in newborn subjects to study SIDS.

Speak with our experienced team about your research during the American Thoracic Society’s 2017 conference.  Take the opportunity to visit the emka & SCIREQ booth  #1731 and learn more about our different solutions for your preclinical research.


¹The Cerebellum and SIDS: Disordered Breathing in a Mouse Model of Developmental Cerebellar Purkinje Cell Loss during Recovery from Hypercarbia – Calton et al. Front Neurol. 7:78, 2016.
²Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in Mice with an Inherited Mutation in RyR2 – Mathur et al. Circ Arrhythm Electrophyisiol. 2:677, 2009

Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a pediatric respiratory disorder that affects preterm infants who experienced respiratory distress. The distress can be treated with artificial surfactant administration and hyperoxia which leads to impaired growth of the lung due. BPD will begin to manifest as inflammation and vascular changes in the lungs¹.

A common model of preclinical BPD uses hyperoxic exposure an early stage of life to alter the development of the subject’s lungs. Using conscious, unrestrained term or preterm subjects in a whole body plethysmography chamber allows for longitudinal measurements of ventilatory parameters, while also enabling controlled mixing and delivery of gases to generate a reproducible hyperoxic environment. Whole body plethysmography provides an ideal set-up to generate a model and track changes in the ventilatory parameters simultaneously.

Hyperoxia induced BPD leads to airway remodeling and airway hyperresponsiveness in early adulthood². Changes in the tissue properties of the subject can reflect changes due to the effects of hyperoxia on lung development³. The flexiVent is a small animal ventilator that measures detailed respiratory mechanics. With the use of an integrated nebulizer, automated dose responses capturing the mechanical properties of the lung can separate naïve and BPD subjects, and potentially show separation within the treated groups due to disease severity.

Once exposed to hyperoxia at early stages of life, subjects are more likely to develop pulmonary hypertension as the changes in lung growth add strains on the cardiovascular system⁴. By measuring right ventricular pressure (RVP) through catheterization and quantifying the Pressure-Volume (PV) loops of the RVP, the severity of the associated pulmonary hypertension can be measured.

The emka & SCIREQ team will be attending the American Thoracic Society’s 2017 conference in Washington, D.C.! Come visit our booth #1731 and speak with our experienced team about our solutions for preclinical pediatric research.

1 Caffeine Prevents Hyperoxia-Induced Functional and Structural Lung Damage in Preterm Rabbits – Toelen et al. Neonatology. 109:274, 2016
2 Characteristics of asthma and airway hyper-responsiveness after premature birth – Oymar et al. Pediatr Allergy Immunol., 16: 487, 2005
3 Neonatal Hyperoxia Causes Pulmonary Vascular Disease and Shortens Life Span in Aging Mice – O’Reilly et al. Am J Physiol., 17:2601, 2011
4 Inhaled nitric oxide attenuates pulmonary hypertension and improves lung growth in infant rats after neonatal treatment with a VEGF receptor inhibitor – Abman et al. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol. 283:L555, 2002

WORLD ASTHMA DAY

The first Tuesday in May is marked as World Asthma Day by the Global Initiative for Asthma. This is an annual event with a goal to improve asthma awareness and care around the world. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, 235 million people suffer from asthma and it’s the most common chronic disease among children. Asthma can be both chronic and heterogeneous and is often associated with allergies to airborne antigens. WHO also notes that asthma affects people in all countries around the world regardless of development¹.


Learn more about SCIREQ's solutions for Asthma research.
 

Assessing airway responsiveness in response to aerosol challenges is the most frequently reported outcome for asthma research. When equipped with an integrated nebulizer, the flexiVent can be used to both deliver aerosol challenges to a subject’s lungs and follow the developing bronchoconstriction through automated data collection.

Thank You to all researchers and health care providers who are striving to develop effective treatments for this condition.

¹World Health Organization. "10 facts on Asthma" http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/asthma/en//