Word: lunged
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...neonatologist's first paper on the subject, co-written by Harvard colleague Jere Mead '43, was published in 1959. In the paper, the authors studied the surface tension of lung extracts prepared from babies with hyaline membrane disease, which causes respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and often leads to death...
Avery and Mead concluded that something which regulates surface tension in the lung must be absent in those babies with hyaline membrane disease. If unregulated, surface tension causes alveoli--the air-carrying sacs of lungs--to collapse, followed by the collapse of the lungs...
...first breath is the most difficult breath you ever take," she says. The differences in air pressure between the atmosphere and the newly born infant's lung, which is airless, create this difficulty. In infants with RDS, breathing is even harder...
Normally, says Avery, the lung contains a constant residue of oxygen, even on exhaling. But in infants with RDS, the lung does not contain this residue, and breathing remains difficult...
With further study, Avery discovered that these premature infants did not have normal amounts of the chemical surfactant. By 1980, the genetic process involved in producing the substance as well as the cell production sites in the lung had been isolated...