Environmental pollutants exposure-derived extracellular vesicles: crucial players in respiratory disorders

Background Individual exposure to environmental pollutants, as one of the most influential drivers of respiratory disorders, has received considerable attention due to its preventability and controllability. Considering that the extracellular vesicle (EV) was an emerging intercellular communication medium, recent studies have highlighted the crucial role of environmental pollutants derived EVs (EPE-EVs) in respiratory disorders.Methods PubMed and Web of Science were searched from January 2018 to December 2023 for publications with key words of environmental pollutants, respiratory disorders and EVs.Results Environmental pollutants could disrupt airway intercellular communication by indirectly stimulating airway barrier cells to secrete endogenous EVs, or directly transmitting exogenous EVs, mainly by biological pollutants. Mechanistically, EPE-EVs transferred specific contents to modulate biological functions of recipient cells, to induce respiratory inflammation and impair tissue and immune function, which consequently contributed to the development of respiratory diseases, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, lung cancer and infectious lung diseases. Clinically, EVs could emerged as promising biomarkers and biological agents for respiratory diseases attributed by their specificity, convenience, sensibility and stability.Conclusions Further studies of EPE-EVs are helpful to understand the aetiology and pathology of respiratory diseases, and facilitate the precision respiratory medicine in risk screening, early diagnosis, clinical management and biotherapy.