Lungs in Focus - Read more about the lung - its functions, its diseases

Lungs in Focus

Read more about the lung - its functions, its diseases

Common illness or rare lung disease, COPD or cystic fibrosis: As a patient or family member, you want to know in a compact and understandable way what underlies these chronic diseases of the lungs. How can I live a successful life with the disease? What's new in research? Can I participate as a patient in a clinical trial?

Answers and information to these and other questions can be found on our partner portal, the Lung Information Service. Here Helmholtz Zentrum München and the German Center for Lung Research summarize all news and information on diseases, prevention, therapies and patient organizations:

Reducing the number of people in the world suffering from lung diseases is also the ambitious goal of our partner organization Stiftung Atemweg.

The prognosis of the World Health Organization is that lung diseases will remain the second most frequent cause of death – it is our aim that  this prognosis of the World Health Organization shall not prove to be true. This will require a huge effort in medicine and research because diseases of the lungs such as COPD, asthma or pulmonary fibrosis are still "young" compared to cardiovascular or metabolic diseases. They have only been increasing during the last decades – due to our lifestyle, environmental pollutants such as particulate matter or other influences such as smoking.

These influences, as well as their effect on the lungs, must be intensively researched. Here you can find out how this happens  –  and how you can make a contribution:

European Respiratory Society –  Healthy Lungs for Life

"Breathe clean air", "Stop smoking" - with these appeals the European Respiratory Society draws attention to the development of lung diseases. It wants to raise awareness in people of the importance of clean air for our respiratory system. And how helpful it is to quit smoking.  A quiz, videos or the online game "Air Pollution Pop" make sure that it doesn't get boring when it comes to communicating knowledge.

Children and young people can play in the city of mini-Munich. There are mayors and taxi drivers, gardeners and garbage collectors – and of course scientists! The CPC-M participates in Mini-Munich and creates together with the children wonderfully colorful explanatory videos about the lungs such as here: