Microplastics in pediatric asthma: Clinical associations with disease severity.
Higher airway microplastic burden linked to worse asthma control in children
Microplastics in pediatric asthma: Clinical associations with disease severity.
Respiratory exposure to microplastics (microplastics) is increasingly recognized as a potential contributor to chronic airway disease, but the microplastics burden in children with asthma and its relationship to disease remain poorly defined.
To explore epithelial responses, patient-derived human alveolar organoids were exposed to polyethylene (polyethylene) particles and subjected to bulk RNA sequencing.
In this cross-sectional study, sputum samples from 46 children with asthma were analyzed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) to quantify six prevalent synthetic polymers.
Polystyrene (polystyrene) was the most frequently detected polymer, present in 100% of the samples, while polyethylene exhibited the highest median mass concentration at 13.96 µg/mL.
Children with poorly controlled asthma demonstrated significantly elevated total microplastics burdens compared to those with well-controlled asthma.
The total microplastics concentration showed a negative correlation with FEV₁% predicted, FVC% predicted, and the Asthma Control Test score.
Respiratory microplastics burden is universal in this pediatric asthma cohort and associates with poor disease control.
Exploratory transcriptomic analysis nominates ferroptosis-associated and pro-inflammatory pathways as candidate mechanisms warranting functional validation in future work.