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 An Inside Look at Covid’s Lasting Damage to the Lungs

The Times analyzed hundreds of millions of data points from the patients’ scans to reconstruct their lungs in 3-D. The resulting visualization offers a vivid, visceral picture of damage that can linger years after infection and irrevocably alter everyday life.

 Australian scientists grow replica human lungs and call for end to animal testing

There have been other attempts to build laboratory lungs. But they are too simple, Chrzanowski said, and too static. Human lungs are constantly changing, expanding and moving due to, for example, the impact of the circulatory system, and the heart beating. The difference between these simple models and the lungs created by Chrzanowski, who came up with the concept, and his PhD student Thanh Huyen Phan, who was integral in designing and building them, is that they include this physiological perfusion, or movement, of fluid through the cells.

 New part of the body found hiding in the lungs

The cells, known as respiratory airway secretory (RAS) cells, are found in tiny, branching passages known as bronchioles, which are tipped with alveoli, the teensy air sacs that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the bloodstream. The new RAS cells are similar to stem cells — "blank canvas" cells that can differentiate into any other type of cell in the body — and are capable of repairing damaged alveoli cells and transforming into new ones.

 Your lungs are really amazing. An anatomy professor explains why

Lungs are remarkable organs that continuously achieve amazing feats, which they do so well that we take them for granted, except when their function is diminished. It all happens in a space inside your chest, divided in two and reduced by the presence of the heart, the great vessels and the esophagus.

Articles of Interest

A History of the Lungs

Early descriptions of the lungs emphasized their importance as cooling agents that maintained the balance of the human body by counteracting the hot temperament of the heart. They also understood that breathing occurred in the lungs, in essence, that the lungs acted like a pair of bellows firing and cooling a furnace.

How Big Are Your Lungs?

The body may seem somewhere on average within the 5-7 foot range, but we are completely compacted. The small intestine unraveled would be about 20 feet long. It is compacted to fit inside of our bodies. If the lungs were laid flat, our lungs can cover a tennis court.

Lung Anatomy

The lungs, which is the organ for respiration is a paired cone shaped organs lying in the thoracic cavity separated from each other by the heart and other structures in the mediastinum.

Lungs

Since the lungs process air, they are the only internal organs that are constantly exposed to the external environment. Central to the human respiratory system, they breathe in between 2,100 and 2,400 gallons (8,000 and 9,000 liters) of air each day—the amount needed to oxygenate the 2,400 gallons (9,000 liters) or so of blood that is pumped through the heart daily.

Lungs as We’ve Never Published Them Before

To show the long-term effects of severe Covid on the lungs, the Graphics desk created visual renderings based on data from CT scans.

Lungs have their own microbiome – and these microbes affect the success of bone marrow transplants in kids

We don’t yet know whether microbiome depletion causes or results from lung disease. But our study suggests that the lung microbiome may be important in predicting bone marrow transplant outcomes. Ultimately, we hope to use this information to develop treatments that restore or strengthen the lungs of high-risk children before they undergo transplantation.

Microplastics found deep in lungs of living people for first time

Particles discovered in tissue of 11 out of 13 patients undergoing surgery, with polypropylene and PET most common.

Microplastics Have Now Been Found in The Deepest Part of The Human Lungs

Each year, the average human consumes an estimated 74,000 particles of plastic with unknown health effects. In March of this year, scientists announced they'd found microplastics flowing through our very veins. Turns out, they're also circulating at low levels deep in our lungs.

Resources

StatPearls

The lungs further divide into individual lobes, which ultimately subdivide into over 300 million alveoli. The alveoli are the primary location for gas exchange.

Teachme Anatomy

The lungs lie either side of the mediastinum, within the thoracic cavity. Each lung is surrounded by a pleural cavity, which is formed by the visceral and parietal pleura. They are suspended from the mediastinum by the lung root – a collection of structures entering and leaving the lungs. The medial surfaces of both lungs lie in close proximity to several mediastinal structures...