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Blood and sputum eosinophils in COPD; relationship with bacterial load

Kolsum, U; Donaldson, GC; Singh, R; Barker, BL; Gupta, V; George, L; Webb, AJ; ... Singh, D; + view all (2017) Blood and sputum eosinophils in COPD; relationship with bacterial load. Respiratory Research , 18 , Article 88. 10.1186/s12931-017-0570-5. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Sputum and blood eosinophil counts predict corticosteroid effects in COPD patients. Bacterial infection causes increased airway neutrophilic inflammation. The relationship of eosinophil counts with airway bacterial load in COPD patients is uncertain. We tested the hypothesis that bacterial load and eosinophil counts are inversely related. METHODS: COPD patients were seen at stable state and exacerbation onset. Sputum was processed for quantitative polymerase chain reaction detection of the potentially pathogenic microorganisms (PPM) H. influenzae, M. catarrhalis and S. pneumoniae. PPM positive was defined as total load ≥1 × 10(4)copies/ml. Sputum and whole blood were analysed for differential cell counts. RESULTS: At baseline, bacterial counts were not related to blood eosinophils, but sputum eosinophil % was significantly lower in patients with PPM positive compared to PPM negative samples (medians: 0.5% vs. 1.25% respectively, p = 0.01). Patients with PPM positive samples during an exacerbation had significantly lower blood eosinophil counts at exacerbation compared to baseline (medians: 0.17 × 10(9)/L vs. 0.23 × 10(9)/L respectively, p = 0.008), while no blood eosinophil change was observed with PPM negative samples. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate an inverse relationship between bacterial infection and eosinophil counts. Bacterial infection may influence corticosteroid responsiveness by altering the profile of neutrophilic and eosinophilic inflammation.

Type: Article
Title: Blood and sputum eosinophils in COPD; relationship with bacterial load
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s12931-017-0570-5
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1186/s12931-017-0570-5
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s). 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords: Bacterial infections, COPD exacerbations, Pulmonary eosinophilia
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1556495
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