We are delighted to present a podcast recording of an interview with Professor Ajit Lalvani to coincide with the TB special edition of Thorax in March. He describes the development of the FDA-approved, NICE and CDC-endorsed interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA, ELISpot, T-SPOT.TB) which he invented and validated as the first advance in diagnosis of latent TB in 100-years. He will discuss new findings using this assay published in the March issue of Thorax, and the prospects for improved immunodiagnostics in TB.

Professor Lalvani is a superstar in this field and has contributed greatly to the TB special edition of Thorax. He is the chair of infectious diseases, co-chairman of the Section of Respiratory Infection of the National Heart and Lung Institute, and honorary consultant physician at Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, St Mary’s Campus. He is a Wellcome Trust senior clinical research fellow and NIHR senior investigator.

Benny Weksler, associate professor of surgery, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, talks to Jennifer Quint, Thorax journal club editor, about surgery for small cell carcinoma of the lung.

See also:
Surgical Resection Should Be Considered for Stage I and II Small Cell Carcinoma of the Lung

Jennifer Quint, Thorax’s journal club editor, talks to Philipp Lepper, consultant physician, University Hospital of Saarland, Germany, about his study which revealed glucose levels can predict mortality in patients admitted with community acquired pneumonia.

See also:
Serum glucose levels for predicting death in patients admitted to hospital for community acquired pneumonia: prospective cohort study

Closing schools to restrict the spread of influenza during a pandemic is an idea oftern floated, but what effect does it actually have? Thorax’s Journal Club editor Jennifer Quint asks David Earn, professor of mathematics, McMaster University, what his work on the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Alberta, Canada reveals.

See also:
Effects of School Closure on Incidence of Pandemic Influenza in Alberta, Canada

A combination of prednisone, azathioprine, and N-acetylcysteine has been widely used as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, however the safety and efficacy of this three-drug regimen is unknown. Jennifer Quint, Thorax’s Journal Club editor, talks to Fernando Martinez, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, about the controversy surrounding the question, and what his paper on it reveals.

See also:
Prednisone, Azathioprine, and N-Acetylcysteine for Pulmonary Fibrosis

Jennifer Quint, Thorax’s Journal Club editor, talks to David Jablons, University of California San Francisco, and consultant for Life Technologies, about his assay to predict survival in resected non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer.

See also:
A practical molecular assay to predict survival in resected non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer: development and international validation studies

Jennifer Quint, Thorax’s Journal Club editor, talks to Subroto Paul, Division of Thorasic Surgery at New York Presbrytarian Hospital System, about his study comparing short-term postoperative outcomes following open and thoracoscopic lobectomy.

See also:
Outcomes after lobectomy using thoracoscopy vs thoracotomy: a comparative effectiveness analysis utilizing the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database
Thorax Journal club article:Outcomes after thoracoscopic versus open lobectomy

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Dale Needham (associate professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) about his paper recently published in the BMJ:

Lung protective mechanical ventilation and two year survival in patients with acute lung injury: prospective cohort study

Ian Pavord (Thorax editor) talks to Peter Gibson (professor of respiratory medicine, John Hunter Hospital, New South Wales, Australia) about non-eosinophilic asthma, particularly neutrophilic asthma.

They discuss the stability of the different inflammatory phenotypes, tools to recognise non-eosinophilic asthma, whether these patients benefit from inhaled steroids, and Professor Gibson’s paper investigating the relationship between H influenzae respiratory infection and neutrophilic asthma.

See also:
Combined Haemophilus influenzae respiratory infection and allergic airways disease drives chronic infection and features of neutrophilic asthma

Jennifer Quint (Thorax’s journal club editor) talks to Paolo Macchiarini (professor in the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm) about using bioartificial scaffolds to replace complex airway defects.

Professor Macchiarini was part of a team who replaced the airway of a tracheal cancer patient with a tailor-made bioartificial scaffold. Their paper, Tracheobronchial transplantation with a stem-cell-seeded bioartificial nanocomposite: a proof-of-concept study, was recently published in the Lancet.