Immune responses in the lungs of patients with tuberculous pleural effusion without pulmonary tuberculosis

BMC Immunology

Research Article

Won-Il Choi¹  Diana Qama²  Kun Young Kwon³ 

[1] Department of Internal Medicine, Dongsan Hospital, Keimyung University School of Medicine, Dalseong-ro 56, Jung-gu, 700-712, Daegu, Republic of Korea;Department of Internal Medicine, Dongsan Hospital, Keimyung University School of Medicine, Dalseong-ro 56, Jung-gu, 700-712, Daegu, Republic of Korea;Regional Hospital, Berat, Albania;Department of Pathology, Dongsan Hospital, Keimyung University School of Medicine, Dalseong-ro 56, Jung-gu, 700-712, Daegu, Republic of Korea;

关键词: Interferon-γ;    Tuberculosis;    Tumor necrosis factor-α;    Vascular endothelial growth factor;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2172-13-45

 received in 2012-04-06, accepted in 2012-07-23,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTuberculous pleural effusion (TPE) is one of the most common forms of extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Because most studies of TPE focused on the pleural space, little information regarding lung parenchyma is available. We therefore aimed to investigate immune responses in the lung parenchyma of TPE patients without pulmonary tuberculosis.MethodsPatients with any evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis, either from radiologic or bacteriologic evaluation, were excluded. Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was collected from 10 newly diagnosed, untreated, HIV-negative TPE patients and 10 healthy controls. We analyzed T-lymphocyte subpopulations and measured 10 cytokines in BALF. Cytokine levels in BALF were standardised using urea.ResultsThe concentrations of interferon-γ (IFN-γ), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and the CD4+/CD8+ ratio of T-lymphocytes were significantly higher in TPE patients without pulmonary tuberculosis than in the controls. Of the cytokines measured in BALF, VEGF showed the highest concentration. No difference was observed in T-helper type 2 cytokines between the 2 groups.ConclusionThere were significant immune responses and increases in IFN-γ, TNF-α, and VEGF in the lung parenchyma of TPE patients without pulmonary tuberculosis. This result suggests that TPE may induce a significant immune response in lung parenchyma.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Qama et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.