The trials and tribulations of IL-5, eosinophils, and allergic asthma.

Eosinophils have been suggested to be part of the pathologic process that characterizes asthma, and their recruitment into the upper or lower airways appears to be essential for the clinical manifestations of allergen inhalation. IL-5 is a cytokine necessary for the development, differentiation, recruitment, activation, and survival of eosinophils. Allergen inhalation increases the production of IL-5 in the airways as measured in bronchoalveolar lavage cells and induced sputum.

Sputum cell counts and exhaled nitric oxide in patients with gastroesophageal reflux, and cough or asthma.

Background: Gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is commonly associated with chronic cough and asthma, but there is little or no information on the nature of any associated airway inflammation.

Objective: To observe whether the association with GER worsens airway inflammation in patients with chronic cough or asthma.

Patients And Methods: The airway inflammatory indexes in induced sputum and exhaled air were examined in a cross-sectional study of 11 patients with cough and GER, nine patients with mildly symptomatic asthma and GER, nine patients with mildly symptomatic asthma without GER and nine normal, healthy control subjects.

The use of sputum cell counts to evaluate asthma medications.

Total and differential cell counts from hypertonic-induced, dithiothreitol-dispersed sputum provide reproducible measurements of airway inflammatory cell counts, which are responsive to treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs. They have helped to understand the kinetics of inflammatory cell changes in asthma after the reduction of corticosteroids and the subsequent re-introduction of treatment. They have identified that the presence of sputum eosinophilia in asthma, chronic cough and chronic airflow limitation is a predictor of steroid-responsiveness and of lack of 'asthma control'.