ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Aging
Sec. Healthy Longevity
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1624233
This article is part of the Research TopicOne Health in AgingView all 3 articles
Age-related Lung Structure Changes by Quantitative Assessment: A Cross-sectional Study in a Chinese Male Cohort
Provisionally accepted
- 1The Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
- 2The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
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Objectives: This study aims to investigate age-related alterations of lung structure.We retrospectively collected 928 male subjects from an annual lung nodule screening cohort. The quantitative parameters included lung volume (LV), mean lesion density (MLD), emphysema indexes (LAA-910, LAA-910%, LAA-950 and LAA-950%), number of bronchi (NB) and volume of bronchi (VB), as well as ratio of airway to the lung (ALR). The quantitative parameters were calculated for total lung, right lung, left lung, and the individual lobes.Results: LV and VB peaked in the group of 51-60 years-old and 61-70 years-old, respectively. MLD decreased with age, while LAA-910, LAA-950, LAA-910%, LAA-950%, and ALR all showed an increasing trend with age. LV, NB, and VB of the right lung were larger than those of the left lung, while MLD, LAA-950, LAA-950%, and ALR of the right lung were lower than those of the left lung (P<0.05). The LV of bilateral upper lobes increased with age, while a decline of LV of bilateral lower lobes was observed since the sixties. The MLD of the bilateral lower lobes decreased (P<0.05). The LAA-910%, LAA-950%, and ALR of the 71-80 years-old in all five lobes were higher than those of the other four groups (P<0.05). LAA-950 and LAA-950% of bilateral lower lobes displayed a steeper increase began at 60 years old,. We also provide a computational formula, LungAge Score, for the assessment of the structural lung aging features.Conclusions: Lung aging is not a linear process, and the lung structural alterations in the upper and lower lobes exhibit significant heterogeneity.
Keywords: age-related changes, Lung structures, Quantitative assessment, LungAge Score, lung aging ALR, airway-to-lung ratio ANOVA, one-way analysis of variance COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease CRDs, chronic respiratory diseases CT, Computer tomography
Received: 07 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shi, Guo, Jin and Shen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cong Shen, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
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