Story Summary: This type of sinusitis isnt subtleyou can spot the patients with polyps from across the room. Kim explains that surgery to remove the polyps is one of the most common treatments for this disease. However, nasal and sinus polyps in these patients almost always regrow. To identify which growth factor might be to blame, the researchers had sinusitis patients with and without polyps rinse their sinus passages with a wash solution, then tested the runoff for the presence of various growth factors. The more VEGF they found in a cell culture, the faster those cells grew. The stained tissue from polyp patients lit up very dramatically, like a city skyline, Kim says, while the tissue from other patients showed little to no staining. Though these results confirmed that the sinuses of patients with polyps were overproducing VEGF, the researchers still werent sure that VEGF was instigating cell overgrowth seen in polyps. In the future, we might have a nasal spray with an anti-VEGF agent in it, she proposes. The results also suggest a new way of predicting which patients will go on to develop polyps. Since many patients with polyps already use sinus washes to ease their symptoms, doctors may be able to use any VEGF present in the runoff from these washes as a marker for the disease and its severity. D. , and Allen Myers, Ph….Read the Full Story

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