High-resolution multimodal imaging reveals spatial and temporal heterogeneity of airway mucus plugging in mice with muco-obstructive lung disease.

ABSTRACT: Mucus plugging is a hallmark of muco-obstructive lung diseases; however, the spatiotemporal dynamics of plug formation remain poorly understood. We used a multimodal high-resolution imaging approach to study mucus plugging in newborn (0-1 days), juvenile (13-16 days), and adult (49-59 days) βENaC-transgenic mice (βENaC-tg, n = 24), a model of muco-obstructive lung disease, in comparison to age-matched wild-type mice (n = 28). Micro-computed tomography (µCT) enabled whole lung mucus scoring on a scale from 0 (no obstruction) to 2 (> 50% obstruction) using an extended murine airway tree nomenclature. A subset of βENaC-tg lungs (5 juvenile, 5 adult) underwent localised synchrotron radiation-based computed tomography (SRCT) for segmentation-based calculation of mucus area and contact ratios as

SUBMITTER: Benke CV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12647124 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature