Chest
Airway Inflammation in COPD Assessed by Sputum Levels of lnterleukin-8*
Section snippets
Subjects
The subjects consisted of 33 patients with COPD and 30 with asthma seen at the outpatient clinic of Nara Medical University Hospital, and 12 normal volunteers. Their characteristics are listed in Table 1. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects, and the study was approved by the ethics committee of our university. The criteria for diagnosis of COPD or asthma were based on the standards of the American Thoracic Society.10 In the patients with COPD, their FEV1 was <80% of predicted
Concentration of IL-8 in Sputum Supernatant
The sputum concentration of IL-8 was significantly higher in the group with COPD than in the group with asthma or in the normal control group. The group with asthma had a significantly higher IL-8 concentration in sputum than the normal control group (COPD: 21.0±1.8 ng/mL [range, 2.8 to 35.2 ng/mL; median, 21.4 ng/mL]; asthma: 8.7±1.4 ng/mL [range, 0.8 to 27.8 ng/mL; median, 5.7 ng/mL]; control: 3.3±0.7 ng/mL [range, 0.8 to 7.2 ng/mL; median, 2.4 ng/mL]; Fig 1).
Concentration of MPO in Sputum Supernatant
The sputum concentration of MPO
Discussion
Airway inflammation, a cardinal pathophysiologic feature in patients with asthma and also COPD,14 is usually evaluated using specimens obtained by bronchial lavage or bronchial biopsy. However, these methods are invasive and difficult to perform repeatedly or to use in patients with severe conditions. More recently, studies have been performed using sputum induced by the inhalation of hypertonic saline solution.15, 16 Although this method appears to be useful, it is not physiologic and its
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