1Maha Salah El-Din Hamdy, 2Laila Ashour Mohamed, 2May El-Attar, 3Sahar Samir Abdel-Maksoud and 4Mohamed Attya Zamzam
departments of 1Microbiology and immunology, 2Chest, 3Clinical pathology, school of medicine, Ain Shams University and 4Chest department Menofya University, Egypt.
Chemokines are a group of cytokines that induce
chemotaxis of the inflammatory cells, mediating the pathophysiology of asthma.
This work investigates production of chemokines namely eotaxine and monocyte
chemotactic protein-3 (MCP-3) in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), obtained
from 24 asthmatic patients (8 mild and 16 moderate) who met the Egyptian
guidelines for diagnosis and management of asthma. 8 non-asthmatic patients who
needed diagnostic bronchoscopy were included as controls. The cells from BALF
were pelleted, and ribonucleic acid (RNA) was extracted and amplified using a
semiquantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The results revealed a
significant increase in the (mRNA) level for MCP-3 and eotaxine in asthmatics
as compared to that of controls (P<0.001). The mRNA levels were 0.28 ±
0.08, 2.19 ± 0.51
& 1.99 ± 0.7
pg/ml for MCP-3 and 0.29 ±
0.10, 1.67 ± 0.66
& 1.98 ± 0.54
pg/ml for eotaxine among the controls, mild and moderate cases of asthma
respectively. The differences between mild and moderate cases were
non-significant (p>0.05) for both MCP-3 and eotaxine in BALF. The eotaxine
mRNA level correlated with the eosinophilic count in the BALF of the moderate
asthmatics patients (r=0.550 and p<0.05). It is concluded that asthma is
associated with combined expression of eotaxine and MCP-3, and that the
degree of expression correlates positively with the eosinophil count and
negatively with the response to usual lines of treatment. These findings could
be considered as a promising therapeutic approach by blockade of the chemokine
receptors.