Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) represents a current challenge for medicine due to its incidence, morbidity and mortality and, also, the absence of an optimal treatment. The COVID-19 outbreak only increased the urgent demand for an affordable, safe and effective treatment for this process. Early clinical trials suggest the therapeutic usefulness of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in acute lung injury (ALI) and ARDS. MSC-based therapies show antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, regenerative, angiogenic, antifibrotic, anti-oxidative stress and anti-apoptotic actions, which can thwart the physiopathological mechanisms engaged in ARDS. In addition, MSC secretome and their derived products, especially exosomes, may reproduce the therapeutic effects of MSC in lung injury. This last strategy of treatment could avoid several safety issues potentially associated with the transplantation of living and proliferative cell populations and may be formulated in different forms. However, the following diverse limitations must be addressed: (i) selection of the optimal MSC, bearing in mind both the heterogeneity among donors and across different histological origins, (ii) massive obtention of these biological products through genetic manipulations of the most appropriate MSC, (iii) bioreactors that allow their growth in 3D, (iv) ideal culture conditions and (v) adequate functional testing of these obtaining biological products before their clinical application.

Purpose: Breast arterial calcifications (BAC) have been associated with cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to examine whether the presence of BAC could predict the development of cardiovascular events in the very long term, as evidence has suggested. Patients and Methods: We conducted a 23-year follow-up retrospective cohort study considering women specifically studied for breast cancer. After reviewing the mammograms of 1759 women, we selected 128 patients with BAC and an equal number of women without BAC. Results: Women with BAC had higher relative risk (RR) for cardiovascular events, globally 1.66 (95% CI): 1.31–2.10 vs. 0.53 (0.39–0.72), and individually for ischemic heart disease 3.25 (1.53–6.90) vs. 0.85 (0.77–0.94), hypertensive heart disease 2.85 (1.59–5.09) vs. 0.79 (0.69–0.89), valvular heart disease 2.19 (1.28–3.75) vs. 0.83 (0.73–0.94), congestive heart failure 2.06 (1.19–3.56) vs. 0.85 (0.75–0.96), peripheral vascular disease 2.8 (1.42–5.52) vs. 0.85 (0.76–0.94), atrial fibrillation 1.83 (1.09–3.08) vs. 0.86 (0.76–0.98), and lacunar infarction 2.23 (1.21–4.09) vs. 0.86 (0.77–0.96). Cox’s multivariate analysis, also considering classical risk factors, indicated that this BAC was significantly and independently associated with survival (both cardiovascular event-free and specific survival; 1.94 (1.38–2.73) and 6.6 (2.4–18.4)). Conclusions: Our data confirm the strong association of BAC on mammograms and the development cardiovascular events, but also evidence the association of BAC with cardiovascular event-free and specific survival.