Skip to content

Pathologic Mechanisms of ARDS 

Thank you for your interest in participating in one of our research studies.  Our research is clinically-oriented, which means we are trying to understand how disease directly impacts patients.  For example, we are studying what immune factors might contribute to someone remaining on life support for a prolonged amount of time after severe injury.  Or what types of long-term complications patients might have from a respiratory virus infection.  We cannot use animal or lab models to answer these types of clinical questions.  These studies can only be conducted with you or your loved one’s generous participation.   

Primary Contact: Lucy Gao –  lygao@uw.edu

The primary objective of this study is to understand how pneumonia develops and resolves in patients who are respiratory life support.  We have identified genetic differences between participants with longer- and shorter time on life support using samples collected from this study.  It is possible we might be able to design drugs to better treat pneumonia using this type of information.  This study is one of the only studies in the world that collects lung fluid from critically ill participants, so your generous participation is leading to research that could otherwise not occur.