Thomas Bahmer

• Medical Professional at LungenClinic Grosshansdorf

Zusammenfassung Die Erfahrungen Studierender in der medizinischen Lehre haben annehmbar einen bedeutenden Einfluss auf die spätere Wahl des Fachgebiets, bislang fehlt es jedoch an objektivierbaren Daten, wie die Wahrnehmung des Faches Pneumologie seitens der Studierenden an deutschen Fakultäten ausfällt und wo Verbesserungspotenzial besteht. Von Ju...

Post-COVID Syndrome (PCS), encompassing the multifaceted sequelae of COVID-19, can be severity-graded using a score comprising 12 different long-term symptom complexes. Acute COVID-19 severity and individual resilience were previously identified as key predictors of this score. This study validated these predictors and examined their relationship t...

Long-term changes in health-related quality of life (HrQoL) after SARS-CoV-2 infection are common, but their causes and consequences are poorly understood. This prospective, population-based study examined associations between HrQoL and 49 demographic and clinical variables. HrQoL was assessed using the European Quality-of-Life-5-Dimensions-5-Level...

Background Humans are subjected to various environmental stressors (bacteria, viruses, pollution) throughout life. As such, an inherent relationship exists between the effect of these exposures with age. The impact of these environmental stressors can manifest through DNA methylation (DNAm). However, whether these epigenetic effects selectively tar...

If health impairments due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) persist for 12 weeks or longer, patients are diagnosed with Post-COVID Syndrome (PCS), or Long-COVID. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has largely subsided in 2024, PCS is still a major health burden worldwide, and identifying genetic modifiers of PCS remains of great clinical and scien...

Background Patients with COPD are often affected by loss of bone mineral density (BMD) and osteoporotic fractures. Natriuretic peptides (NP) are known as cardiac markers, but have also been linked to fragility-associated fractures in the elderly. As their functions include regulation of fluid and mineral balance, they also might affect bone metabol...

Fair allocation of funding in multi-centre clinical studies is challenging. Models commonly used in Germany - the case fees (“fixed-rate model”, FRM) and up-front staffing and consumables (“up-front allocation model”, UFAM) lack transparency and fail to suitably accommodate variations in centre performance. We developed a performance-based reimburs...

After infection with SARS-CoV-2 a substantial amount of people suffers from a post COVID syndrome (PCS). Cognitive difficulties and fatigue seem to be the main symptoms [1]. The EEG offers the potential to uncover possible underlying mechanisms, but previous delta power results are ambiguous [2,3]. We hypothesized that higher delta power in a front...

Background The evidence regarding effects of statins on exacerbation risk in COPD remains controversial. Previous studies often excluded patients with cardiovascular comorbidities despite their high prevalence in COPD and role for exacerbations. Based on the cardioprotective properties of statins, we hypothesised that statins may reduce the risk of...

Purpose The objective examination of the Post-COVID syndrome (PCS) remains difficult due to heterogeneous definitions and clinical phenotypes. The aim of the study was to verify the functionality and correlates of a recently developed PCS score. Methods The PCS score was applied to the prospective, multi-center cross-sectoral cohort (in- and outpa...

Background Despite the high prevalence and major disability associated with fatigue and cognitive deficits after SARS-CoV-2 infection, little is known about long-term trajectories of these sequelae. We aimed to assess long-term trajectories of these conditions and to identify risk factors for non-recovery. Methods We analyzed longitudinal data fro...

Background MRproANP and COPAVP are prognostic markers for mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Furthermore, these biomarkers predict mortality due to cardiovascular diseases, which are important prognostically determining comorbidities in patients with COPD. However, less is known about these biomarkers in recently diagnosed m...

Background: Depression and fatigue are commonly observed sequelae following viral diseases such as COVID-19. Identifying symptom constellations that differentially classify post-COVID depression and fatigue may be helpful to individualize treatment strategies. Here, we investigated whether self-reported post-COVID depression and post-COVID fatigue...

Rationale: The strongest genetic risk factor for childhood-onset asthma, the 17q21 locus, is associated with increased viral susceptibility and disease-promoting processes. Objectives: To identify biological targets underlying the escalated viral susceptibility associated with the clinical phenotype mediated by the 17q21 locus. Methods: Genome...

Exhaled breath contains numerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) known to be related to lung disease like asthma. Its collection is non-invasive, simple to perform and therefore an attractive method for the use even in young children. We analysed breath in children of the multicenter All Age Asthma Cohort (ALLIANCE) to evaluate if ‘breathomics’ h...

Rationale and Objective Plasma extracellular vesicles (EVs) represent a vital source of molecular information about health and disease states. Due to their heterogenous cellular sources, EVs and their cargo may predict specific pathomechanisms behind disease phenotypes. Here we aimed to utilize EV microRNA (miRNA) signatures to gain new insights in...

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a complex, debilitating, long-term illness without a diagnostic biomarker. ME/CFS patients share overlapping symptoms with long COVID patients, an observation which has strengthened the infectious origin hypothesis of ME/CFS. However, the exact sequence of events leading to disease dev...

A relevant proportion of patients suffer from long-lasting impairments following an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. The proposed post-COVID syndrome (PCS) score may improve comparison in the course and classification of affected patients. A prospective cohort of 952 patients presenting to the post-COVID outpatient clinic at Jena University Hospital, Ge...

Purpose: We aimed to assess symptoms in patients after SARS-CoV-2 infection and to identify factors predicting prolonged time to symptom-free. Methods: COVIDOM/NAPKON-POP is a population-based prospective cohort of adults whose first on-site visits were scheduled ≥ 6 months after a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test. Retrospective data including self-...

Purpose: To investigate morphofunctional chest MRI for the detection and management of incidental pulmonary nodules in participants with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Materials and methods: In this prospective study, 567 participants (mean age, 66 years ± 9 [SD]; 340 men) underwent same-day contrast-enhanced MRI and nonenhanced l...

Background Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infection which can affect the central nervous system. In this study, we sought to investigate associations between neuroimaging findings with clinical, demographic, blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) parameters, pre-existing conditions and the severity of acute COVID-19. Materials and methods...

Background: Impulse oscillometry (IOS) allows an effort-independent evaluation of small airway function in asthma. Unfortunately, well-determined minimal clinically important differences (MCID) for IOS-measures are lacking. Here, we provide MCIDs for frequently used IOS-measures, namely frequency dependence of resistance (FDR) and area of reactanc...

Background: The Asthma Severity Scoring System (ASSESS) quantifies asthma severity in adolescents and adults. Scale performance in children < 12 years is unknown. Objective: To validate the ASSESS score in the All Age Asthma Cohort (ALLIANCE) and explore its use in children <12 years. Methods: Scale properties, responsiveness, and known-group...

Background Nitrogen multiple breath washout (N2MBW) is a lung function test increasingly used in small airway diseases. Quality criteria have not yet been globally implemented and time-consuming retrospective overreading is necessary. Little data has been published on children with recurrent wheeze or asthma from multicentered studies. Methods Chil...

Background: As a national effort to better understand the current pandemic, three cohorts collect sociodemographic and clinical data from COVID-19 patients from different target populations within the German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON). Furthermore, the German Corona Consensus Dataset (GECCO) was introduced as a harmonized basic info...

Background As a national effort to better understand the current pandemic, three cohorts collect sociodemographic and clinical data from COVID-19 patients from different target populations within the German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON). Furthermore, the German Corona Consensus Dataset (GECCO) was introduced as a harmonized basic inform...

Anonymization has the potential to foster the sharing of medical data. State-of-the-art methods use mathematical models to modify data to reduce privacy risks. However, the degree of protection must be balanced against the impact on statistical properties. We studied an extreme case of this trade-off: the statistical validity of an open medical dat...

Background: Asthma is a heterogeneous disease; therefore, biomarkers that can assist in the identification of subtypes and direct therapy are highly desirable. Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that leads to changes in the extracellular matrix (ECM) by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) degradation causing fragments of type I collagen that is...

In pediatrics and adult respiratory medicine different lung diseases play different roles. Asthma is one of the most frequent respiratory diseases worldwide and can be newly manifested across all ages, from childhood to senior age; however, asthma symptoms can also resolve at any time and the disease can go into remission. Pediatricians and adult r...

Background: Reliable estimates of frequency, severity and associated factors of both fatigue and cognitive impairment after COVID-19 are needed. Also, it is not clear whether the two are distinct sequelae of COVID-19 or part of the same syndrome.'' Methods: In this prospective multicentre study, frequency of post-COVID fatigue and cognitive impairm...

Background: Chemosensory dysfunction (CD) has been reported as a common symptom of SARS-CoV-2 infection, but it is not well understood whether and for how long changes of smell, taste and chemesthesis persist in infected individuals. Methodology: Unselected adult residents of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein with Polymerase Chain R...

In patients with severe #COVID19, increased levels of autoantibodies against PAR1 were found. These might serve as allosteric agonists of PAR1 on endothelial cells and platelets, and thus might contribute to the pathogenesis of microthrombosis in COVID-19. https://bit.ly/3pqM9Vv.

Background: Different asthma phenotypes are driven by molecular endotypes. A Th1-high phenotype is linked to severe, therapy-refractory asthma, subclinical infections and neutrophil inflammation. Previously, we found neutrophil granulocytes (NGs) from asthmatics exhibit decreased chemotaxis towards leukotriene B4 (LTB4), a chemoattractant involved...

The German government initiated the Network University Medicine (NUM) in early 2020 to improve national research activities on the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. To this end, 36 German Academic Medical Centers started to collaborate on 13 projects, with the largest being the National Pandemic Cohort Network (...

Background: Post-COVID syndrome (PCS) is an important sequela of COVID-19, characterised by symptom persistence for >3 months, post-acute symptom development, and worsening of pre-existing comorbidities. The causes and public health impact of PCS are still unclear, not least for the lack of efficient means to assess the presence and severity of PC...

Given the highly variable clinical phenotype of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a deeper analysis of the host genetic contribution to severe COVID-19 is important to improve our understanding of underlying disease mechanisms. Here, we describe an extended GWAS meta-analysis of a well-characterized cohort of 3255 COVID-19 patients with respirat...

The final version has been published open access at eClinicalMedicine: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101651 --- Background: Reliable estimates of frequency, severity and associated factors of both fatigue and cognitive impairment after COVID-19 are needed. Also, it is not clear whether the two are distinct sequelae of COVID-19 or part o...

Background Asthma exacerbations are a serious public health concern due to high healthcare resource utilization, work/school productivity loss, impact on quality of life, and risk of mortality. The genetic basis of asthma exacerbations has been studied in several populations, but no prior study has performed a multi‐ancestry meta‐analysis of genome...

Background: Comprehensive studies investigated the role of T cells in asthma leading to personalised treatment options targeting severe eosinophilic asthma. However, little is known about the contribution of B cells to this chronic inflammatory disease. In this study, we investigated the contribution of various B cell populations to specific clini...

Background Little is known about the relationship between airway inflammatory phenotypes and some important asthma features such as small airway dysfunction (SAD). Objective To describe the longitudinal impact of airway inflammatory phenotypes on SAD and asthma outcomes Methods We measured eosinophil and neutrophil counts in induced sputum at bas...

Rationale In adults, personalised asthma treatment targets patients with T2-high and eosinophilic asthma phenotypes. It is unclear whether such classification is achievable in children. Objectives To define T2-high asthma with easily accessible biomarkers and compare resulting phenotypes across all ages. Methods In the multicenter clinical ALL Ag...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Insbesondere okuläre Manifestationen bei COVID-19 wurden bisher kaum in prospektiven Studien erfasst. Ziel der Arbeit Das Ziel dieser Studie war es, die COVID-19-assoziierten Veränderungen des vorderen und hinteren Augenabschnittes zu evaluieren sowie die Prävalenz von SARS-CoV-2-RNA in der Tränenflüssigkeit zu analysi...

We studied whether in patients with COPD the use of metformin for diabetes treatment was linked to a pattern of lung function decline consistent with the hypothesis of anti-aging effects of metformin. Patients of GOLD grades 1–4 of the COSYCONET cohort with follow-up data of up to 4.5 y were included. The annual decline in lung function (FEV1, FVC)...

The German government initiated the Network University Medicine (NUM) in early 2020 to improve national research activities on the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. To this end, 36 German Academic Medical Centers started to collaborate on 13 projects, with the largest being the National Pandemic Cohort Network (...

Purpose Over the course of COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that SARS-CoV-2 infections may affect multiple organs and have serious clinical sequelae, but on-site clinical examinations with non-hospitalized samples are rare. We, therefore, aimed to systematically assess the long-term health status of samples of hospitalized and non-hospit...

In the era of personalized medicine, insights into the molecular mechanisms that differentially contribute to disease phenotypes, such as asthma phenotypes including obesity-associated asthma, are urgently needed. Peripheral blood was drawn from 10 obese, non-atopic asthmatic adults with a high body mass index (BMI; 36.67 ± 6.90); 10 non-obese, non...

Background: There is currently a dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide, and further drastic restrictions in our daily life will be necessary to contain this pandemic. The implications of restrictive measures like social-distancing and mouth-nose protection on patients with chronic respiratory diseases have hardly been investig...

Introduction Treatments of interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) mainly focus on disease stabilization and relief of symptoms by managing inflammation or suppressing fibrosis by (in part costly) drugs. To highlight economic burden of drug treatment in different ILD-subtypes we assessed cost trends and therewith-associated drivers. Methods Using data f...

Background Asthma is a heterogeneous syndrome substantiating the urgent requirement for endotype-specific biomarkers. Dysbalance of fibrosis and fibrolysis in asthmatic lung tissue leads to reduced levels of the inflammation-protective collagen 4 (COL4A3). Objective To delineate the degradation of COL4A3 in allergic airway inflammation and evaluat...

Due to the highly variable clinical phenotype of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), deepening the host genetic contribution to severe COVID-19 may further improve our understanding about underlying disease mechanisms. Here, we describe an extended GWAS meta-analysis of 3,260 COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure and 12,483 population control...

Rationale Small airway dysfunction (SAD) is a frequent feature of asthma that has been linked to disease severity and poor symptom control. However, little is known about the role of SAD in nocturnal asthma. Objective To study the association between the severity of SAD and frequency of nocturnal symptoms compared to conventional lung function tes...

Background : SARS-CoV-2 seems to be mainly transmissible via respiratory droplets. We compared the time-dependent SARS-CoV-2 viral load in serial pharyngeal swab and exhaled breath (EB) samples of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Methods : In this prospective proof of concept study, we examined hospitalized patients initially tested positive for SA...

Background: Extracellular DNA (e-DNA) and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) are linked to asthmatics airway inflammation. However, data demonstrating the characterization of airway inflammation associated with excessive e-DNA production and its impact on asthma outcomes are limited. Objective: To characterize the airway inflammation associat...

Zusammenfassung Einleitung Der demografische Wandel in der Gesellschaft und innerhalb der Ärzteschaft ebenso wie sich ändernde gesellschaftliche Vorstellungen und Normen in Bezug auf das Verhältnis von Beruf und Freizeit führen zu Herausforderungen in der Arbeitsplatzgestaltung im Krankenhaus. Daneben steht die Organisation der ärztlichen Weiterbil...

Background Little is known about the role of small airway dysfunction (SAD) and its complex relationship with asthma control and physical activity (PA). Objective to investigate the interrelationship between SAD, risk factors of asthma severity, symptom control and PA. Methods We assessed SAD by impulse oscillometry and other sophisticated lung f...

Rationale Asthma, obesity and physical activity (PA) are interrelated. However, longitudinal data with objective PA measures and direct assessment of body composition are still lacking. Objective To study the impact of symptom control on PA and body composition. Methods In a longitudinal cohort study of the German Center for Lung Research, we ass...

Background Pirfenidone has been shown to slow disease progression in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). However, there are few treatment options for progressive fibrotic interstitial lung diseases (ILDs)) other than IPF. In view of the pathomechanistic and clinical similarities between IPF and other progressive fibrotic ILDs, we aim...

Objective: Increased mortality from respiratory diseases was observed in epidemiologic studies of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) as a potentially underestimated extraintestinal manifestation. We therefore investigated the presence of pulmonary manifestations of IBD and the potential effect of TNF-α-inhibitors on pulmonary function tests (PF...

Rational Asthma, obesity and physical activity (PA) are interrelated. However, longitudinal data with objective PA measures and direct assessment of body composition are still lacking.Objectiveto study the impact of asthma severity and symptom control on PA and body composition.Methods In a longitudinal cohort study, we assessed the body compositio...