Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia

"You can learn a lot of things from the flowers..." - Alice in Wonderland

There are a couple of disorders resulting in bronchiectasis: cystic fibrosis, infections, bronchial obstruction, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosus, and also primary ciliary dyskinesia.

In primary ciliary dyskinesia, there is an absence of dynein arms in cilia. Dynein arms contain ATPase for the movement of cilia. As you might guess, the lack of dynein arms will impair the ability of the ciliated epithelial cells in the respiratory tree to clear up mucus and other respiratory secretions.

Kartagener's syndrome is a subset of primary ciliary dyskinesia. It features symptoms including bronchiectasis, situs invertus, and sinusitis. Situs invertus occurs when there's a mirror image of the major organs. CRAZY!