Dr. Joosun Shin, assistant professor at the UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing and a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Cancer Control and Survivorship Program, has received a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new approach to identifying and managing the underlying causes of dyspnea, or shortness of breath, among people who smoke, a group at high risk for developing pulmonary disease and lung cancer.
The award builds on Shin's research program in precision dyspnea science. With the funding, the project will apply machine learning models to answer a question that has long frustrated clinicians: Why is a given patient short of breath? Shin's team will build a person-centered diagnostic framework that enables the symptom to be assessed and managed with greater precision.
Tobacco use affects more than 1 billion adults worldwide, and an estimated 40% of them — roughly 400 million people — experience dyspnea. Because dyspnea is multifactorial, it is often a clinical challenge to effectively treat the symptom in patients with multiple potential underlying causes. When imprecisely managed, dyspnea can limit daily activity, reduce independence and erode quality of life.
“Our goal is to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and develop a more precise way to identify different dyspnea subtypes so that patients can ultimately receive better, more individualized care," said Shin. “Our research is particularly relevant to people at risk for lung cancer. Individuals with a history of smoking are at increased risk for developing the disease. In addition, dyspnea before a lung cancer diagnosis has been associated with poorer survivorship outcomes following lung cancer treatment. So, particularly for individuals who develop lung cancer, accurate diagnosis and timely management of dyspnea both before and after the lung cancer diagnosis is important."
Shin will conduct the project with collaborators Dr. Richard Casaburi, a distinguished professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Peter Castaldi, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Channing Division of Network Medicine.
