EDITORIAL

Surfactant and lung inflammation

Surfactant and lung inflammation

K B M Reid¹, H Clark¹, N Palaniyar²

¹ MRC Immunochemistry Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 ODQ, UK
² Lung Biology Research Program, Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario 5G 1X8, Canada

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor K B M Reid
MRC Immunochemistry Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 ODQ, UK; kenneth.reid@bioch.ox.ac.uk

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SP-A and SP-D, either on their own or in combination with existing surfactant therapy, may have a role in the treatment of lung inflammation

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Keywords: inflammation; surfactant proteins

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The thin alveolar lining consists of a single layer of epithelial cells and an overlay of an oily substance, the pulmonary surfactant, which contains surfactant proteins (SPs) (10% w/w) and lipids (90% w/w). In addition to the well established ability of the surfactant system to reduce alveolar surface tension and thereby prevent collapse of the alveoli on expiration, it is also involved in the very efficient removal of microbes and their debris,^1–3 dying epithelial cells, and phagocytes.⁴ The therapeutic use of exogenous surfactant is well established and has been shown to be effective in the treatment of premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome. The surfactant preparations normally used are natural surfactants of porcine (Curosurf) or bovine (Alveolfact, Survanta) origin, or synthetic protein free preparations. Surfactant preparations derived from natural sources contain the hydrophobic peptides SP-B and SP-C but none—or very low levels—of the much larger hydrophilic . . . [Full text of this article]

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