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Introduction: Annexins A1 and A2 have been related with the maintenance of tissue integrity. They have been identified in a wide variety of tissues, but little is known regarding their expression in upper the aerodigestive tract. The aim of this work is to describe the expression of these proteins in the mucosa of the upper aerodigestive tract., Material and Methods: Tissue samples from respiratory (nasal and laryngeal) and digestive (oral and pharyngeal) mucosa from non-oncological patients were studied. Annexin A1 and A2 expression was determined by immunohistochemistry., Results: Both annexins were expressed in the ciliated and in the stratified non-keratinized epithelia, but with a different pattern; ANXA1 was expressed in the more differentiated cells whereas ANXA2 was expressed in the less differentiated ones (with the exception of the cilia of ciliated cells)., Conclusion: Although annexins A1 and A2 are structurally and philogenetically related its expression pattern in the upper aerodigestive tract suggests that they have different functions.

Introduction: Acute rejection is the most common complication in lung transplantation., Objective: This work aimed to assess the contribution of pulmonary clearance of radioaerosols and relative pulmonary perfusion to diagnose acute rejection in lung transplantation., Material and Method: We have designed a prospective study and present the results obtained for the preliminary phase. This work includes 5 patients who have received a lung transplantation and in whom 28 studies of pulmonary clearance of 99mTc-DTPA and relative pulmonary perfusion with 99mTc microspheres were performed. The pulmonary biopsy diagnosed 9 rejection episodes, 2 associated to CMV infection., Results: The mean radioaerosol clearance time increased when the follow-up was favorable and decreased in 6 of the 9 rejection episodes, including 2 associated to CMV infection. There was only one case with decreased mean clearance time that was not associated to rejection., Conclusions: Calculating relative pulmonary perfusion can be useful in the follow-up of single lung transplantation but not in bipulmonary ones. Our results suggest that measuring 99mTc-DTPA clearance is useful to suspect a rejection episode.