The lungs of seven percent of all intensive care unit patients will fill up with fluid causing a 30 to 50 percent chance of death from a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This syndrome has few options for treatment, progresses quickly and is still poorly understood biologically, and being obese is an important risk factor. Using animal models of ARDS, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have uncovered a mechanism that appears to explain why obesity predisposes to developing ARDS, and in the process, might have discovered a novel strategy for preventing ARDS in obese individuals.
