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 appearing
online in The FASEB Journal. 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.
continue here....
"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."
ScienceDaily
(July 31, 2012).
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