Small Airway Brush Gene Expression Predicts Chronic Lung Allograft Dysfunction and Mortality

Chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD) is associated with significant morbidity after lung transplantation, however, at the time of diagnosis of CLAD, the disease process has usually adversely impacted graft function. The authors studied a scoring system based on the Airway Inflammation 2 (AI2) gene set and found that this score predicted time to graft failure as well as retransplant free survival in patients with CLAD, as compared to a validation cohort that included non-CLAD patients. Although there may be a component of survival bias during matching, this is a highly interesting area of research that could have important clinical implications in early identification of CLAD.