New research suggests that sneezing is
the body's natural reboot and that patients with disorders of the
nose such as sinusitis can't reboot, explaining why they sneeze more
often than others.
Who would have thought that our noses
and Microsoft Windows' infamous blue screen of death could have
something in common? But that's the case being made by a new
research report.
Specifically, scientists now know exactly why we sneeze, what
sneezing should accomplish, and what happens when sneezing does not
work properly.
Much like a temperamental computer, our noses require a "reboot"
when overwhelmed, and this biological reboot is triggered by the
pressure force of a sneeze. When a sneeze works properly, it resets
the environment within nasal passages so "bad" particles breathed in
through the nose can be trapped. The sneeze is accomplished by
biochemical signals that regulate the beating of cilia (microscopic
hairs) on the cells that line our nasal cavities.
"While sinusitis rarely leads to death,
it has a tremendous impact on quality of life, with the majority of
symptoms coming from poor clearance of mucus," said Noam A. Cohen,
M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department
of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "By understanding the process by which
patients with sinusitis do not clear mucus from their nose and
sinuses, we can try to develop new strategies to compensate for
their poor mucus clearance and improve their quality of life."
To make this discovery, Cohen and
colleagues used cells from the noses of mice which were grown in
incubators and measured how these cells cleared mucus. They examined
how the cells responded to a simulated sneeze (puff of air) by
analyzing the cells' biochemical responses.
Some of the experiments were replicated in human sinus and nasal
tissue removed from patients with and without sinusitis. They found
that cells from patients with sinusitis do not respond to sneezes in
the same manner as cells obtained from patients who do not have
sinusitis. The researchers speculate that sinusitis patients sneeze
more frequently because their sneezes fail to reset the nasal
environment properly or are less efficient at doing so. Further
understanding of why sinusitis patients have this difficulty could
aid in the development of more effective medications or treatments.
"I'm confident that modern biochemical
studies of ciliary beating frequency will help us find new
treatments for chronic sinusitis," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D.,
Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "I'm far less confident in our
abilities to resolve messy computer crashes. We now know why we
sneeze. Computer crashes are likely to be a mystery forever."
For more information
Ke-Qing Zhao, Andrew T. Cowan, Robert J. Lee, Natalia Goldstein,
Karla Droguett, Bei Chen, Chunquan Zheng, Manuel Villalon, James N.
Palmer, James L. Kreindler, and Noam A. Cohen. Molecular modulation
of airway epithelial ciliary response to sneezing. FASEB J.
doi:10.1096/fj.11-202184;
http://www.fasebj.org/content/26/8/3178.abstract.
(MDN) |