While inhaled medications can provide quick relief of symptoms, care must be taken to provide adequate dosage levels to avoid adverse acute and chronic side effects (e.g. In addition, because of their potential to enter the systemic circulation through the vast pulmonary capillary network, inhaled therapeutics are now being considered as an effective way to deliver vaccinations 5 and gene therapies 6, 7. The advantage of inhaled aerosol medications is that the drugs can be delivered directly to the sites being treated and are therefore an ideal option for respiratory disease treatment (e.g., asthma, cystic fibrosis, respiratory infections). Depending on the deposition location, size, and material composition, aerosol particles may be leveraged to treat disease or cause acute and/or chronic health consequences. Indeed, the fate of inhaled particles in the lung is a function of anatomy, minute volumes, and particle size/shape. The pulmonary airways continue to develop throughout postnatal growth, impacting both the structure and function of the respiratory tract 4, leading to changes in regional and total dosimetry. On the other hand, while it is evident that children are more susceptible to toxic particles 2, 3, it is not well understood how this risk changes throughout the lifespan. Most inhaled therapeutics are designed for children 4 years and older, requiring clinicians to prescribe medications off label for treatment of respiratory diseases in infants 1. These results highlight the need for additional clinical and computational studies that investigate the efficiency of treatment, while optimizing dosage levels in order to alleviate side effects, in youth.Īerosol medications are frequently used to treat respiratory diseases in children and infants, yet the relationship between age and dose remains unclear. Furthermore, we find that dose cannot be predicted by simply scaling by tidal volumes. Due to their lower tidal volumes and functional residual capacities the deposited mass is smaller while the tissue concentrations are larger in the infant and child subjects, compared to the adult. For 3 \(\upmu\)m diameter particles we estimate total deposition as 88, 73, and \(66\%\) and the conducting versus respiratory deposition ratios as 4.0, 0.5, and 0.4 for the infant, child, and adult, respectively. In this study, we estimate aerosol dosages (particle diameters of 1, 3, and 5 \(\upmu\)m) in a 3 month-old infant, a 6 year-old child, and a 36 year-old adult by performing whole lung subject-specific particle simulations throughout respiration. Correlation between age and aerosol dosimetry is needed, specifically because youth are more susceptible to medication side effects. Anatomical and physiological changes alter airflow characteristics and aerosol distribution in the developing lung.
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