Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., Vol 152, No. 1, Jul 1995, 71-75.
Cytokines in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of patients with active pulmonary sarcoidosis
RE Girgis, MA Basha, M Maliarik, J Popovich Jr and MC Iannuzzi
Department of Internal Medicine, Henry Ford Health Sciences Center, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA.
Numerous cytokines are thought to be important in the pathogenesis of
granulomatous inflammation and subsequent fibrosis in sarcoidosis.
Interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-8, two recently described cytokines with a broad
spectrum of proinflammatory effects, could participate in this disease. We
obtained bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from 16 subjects (13
African-American, three Caucasian) with untreated active pulmonary
sarcoidosis and 10 healthy nonsmoking volunteers (nine Caucasian, one
African-American). Concentrated BALF was analyzed by an ELISA for IL-6,
IL-8, and albumin. The median IL-6 level was 9.8 pg/mg albumin (range,
0-278) for the sarcoid group compared with 0.14 pg/mg (range, 0.14-9.8) in
the control subjects (p = 0.001). The corresponding values for IL-8 were
202 pg/mg (range, 35-2179) versus 5.0 pg/mg (range, 0-44) in the control
subjects (p < 0.001). Among the sarcoid patients, BALF IL-6 and IL-8
levels correlated with each other (r = 0.96, p < 0.001), and both
cytokines correlated with the BALF neutrophil percentage (r = 0.96 and
0.95, respectively; p < 0.001 for both). No difference was detected in
IL-8 concentrations as measured by ELISA in culture supernatants of
alveolar macrophages obtained from five sarcoid patients and five control
subjects. We conclude that IL-6 and IL-8 are elevated in BALF of patients
with active sarcoidosis and may be important modulators of the disease
process.
