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Background: Neuroplasticity in the lungs is increasingly recognized as a pathological feature of asthma. Plasticity in efferent cholinergic airway neurons has been shown to occur in human asthma and to correlate with airway hyperresponsiveness. Despite being widely prescribed, little is known regarding the effects of synthetic glucocorticoids (sGC) on cholinergic neurons from the airways and whether this could halt the process of neuroplasticity.

Methods: We applied a 50-day human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) – derived peripheral cholinergic neuron differentiation protocol and exposed these cells to different durations of dexamethasone treatment. We used FACS, RT-PCR, Ca+2 imaging and RNAseq to analyse the effects of dexamethasone exposure.

Results: We observed that dexamethasone exposure during the last 5 days of differentiation resulted in highest observable effects. Dexamethasone exposed …