The finding may be another step forward for patients who have typically had a bleak prognosis. Last month, studies revealed that two new medications might offer some hope for the first effective treatment of IPF.
Without a lung transplant, IPF remains an incurable, progressive disease that causes tissue deep in the lungs to stiffen and scar. Seventy percent of patients die within five years.
According to the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis, more than 128,000 Americans suffer from IPF, with 40,000 dying from the disease each year.
The disease starts with shortness of breath or a dry, hacking cough, but soon robs the person’s body of the oxygen needed to move about or properly function, according to the U.S National Institutes of Health. Doctors don’t know what causes IPF, although they suspect that smoking, genetics, certain viral infections or acid reflux could play a role in damaging the lungs, the NIH said.
In the new study, researchers found that chronically high levels of an injury-repair protein called chitinase 3-like-1 (CHI3L1) seems linked to an accumulation of scar tissue in the lungs of people with IPF.
“The CHI3L1 is doing exactly what it is supposed to do — it is designed to shut off cell death and decrease injury,” study co-senior author Dr. Jack Elias, dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University, explained in a university news release.
According to Elias’ team, CHI3L1 is produced in response to injuries to lung tissue. The protein helps shield injured cells from dying, and at the same time it helps spur tissue repair — fibrosis — to “patch up” the damage. But this mechanism appears to get out of control, so stiff, fibrotic tissue keeps piling up.
“At the same time [the protein] is decreasing cell death it is driving the fibrosis,” Elias said. ” You’ve got this ongoing injury so you’ve got these ongoing attempts to shut off injury, which stimulate scarring.”