The immune response and its therapeutic modulation in bronchiectasis.

Bronchiectasis (BC) is a chronic pulmonary disease with tremendous morbidity and significant mortality. As pathogen infection has been advocated as a triggering insult in the development of BC, a central role for the immune response in this process seems obvious. Inflammatory cells are present in both the airways as well as the lung parenchyma, and multiple mediators of immune cells including proteases and cytokines or their humoral products are increased locally or in the periphery.