Asthma and lower airway diseaseAccumulation of intraepithelial mast cells with a unique protease phenotype in TH2-high asthma
Section snippets
Airway Tissue Bank at the University of California, San Francisco
We studied biological samples from the Airway Tissue Bank at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). These samples had been collected during research bronchoscopy in healthy and asthmatic volunteers. Bronchoscopy included collection of epithelial brushings and bronchial biopsy specimens by using methods previously described.6, 12, 13, 14 For this study, we reviewed mast cell gene expression data from our previously generated epithelial microarray and quantitative RT-PCR (qPCR) data6
Gene expression for mast cell proteases is increased in asthmatic epithelium, especially in the TH2-high subgroup of asthma, and predicts responsiveness to ICSs
We previously provided summary data for gene expression for tryptase and CPA3 in epithelial brushings from 42 steroid-naive subjects with asthma and 28 healthy control subjects.6 These summary data showed that tryptase and CPA3 expression was higher than normal in asthmatic subjects. Here we show that each of these 2 genes is overexpressed in some, but not all, of the 42 asthmatic subjects (Fig 1). Interestingly, using microarray- or qPCR-based gene expression profiling, we found no difference
Discussion
We found that the numbers of mast cells in the airway epithelium were increased in some, but not all, of the 26 asthmatic subjects we studied. By classifying the asthmatic subjects as having TH2-high or TH2-low asthma based on expression of IL-13–responsive genes in their epithelial brushings, we discovered that IEMC numbers in the TH2-high subgroup were significantly higher than those in the TH2-low subgroup. In fact, the numbers of IEMCs in the TH2-low subgroup were similar to those in the
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Cited by (0)
Supported by the National Institutes of Health National Research Service AwardF32HL093999-01 (R.H.D.), A1077439-025 and R01 HL080414 (J.V.F.), R01 HL095372 (P.G.W.), and P01 HL024136 (G.H.C.).
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: G. H. Caughey receives research support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. P. G. Woodruff receives research support from Genentech. J. V. Fahy has consultant arrangements with Amira, Cytokinetics, Abbott, and GlaxoSmithKline and receives research support from Genentech and the NIH. The rest of the authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.