@heathert Thank you for posting this article. It goes along with what my dr said to my husband and I when we first consulted with him in 2013. He said that bronchiectasis was very much the same as CF without the CF gene. And it has to do the the proteins that we lack to protect the lungs from various bacterias that we breathe in. It is funny, I guessed it was a protein issue back in 2007. I did all kinds of research online through NIH, Mayo, and institutes in other countries including the UK, Germany & Japan. I had notebooks that looked like a mad scientist was trying to figure out a great mystery. Well, I WAS trying to figure out a great mystery. I was stymied as to why an otherwise healthy person (me) was so incredibly ill. It all pointed to a protein issue. As I recall, it was a B protein of some sort.