Journal
CANADIAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL
Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 144-148Publisher
HINDAWI LTD
DOI: 10.1155/2011/430317
Keywords
Asthma; Bronchitis heterogeneity; Clinical practice; COPD; Sputum cell counts
Categories
Funding
- Merck Canada Inc
- Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education
Ask authors/readers for more resources
BACKGROUND: Sputum cell counts have identified inflammatory subtypes of bronchitis in relatively small numbers of subjects with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic cough in research studies. The prevalence of different subtypes of bronchitis in routine clinical practice, however, has not been reported. OBJECTIVE: To examine the heterogeneity of bronchitis and its relationship to the severity of airflow obstruction. METHODS: A retrospective cross-sectional survey based on a computerized database of spontaneous or induced sputum cell counts examined in a large university tertiary respiratory outpatient clinic. RESULTS: The database contained 4232 consecutive sputum records from 2443 patients with chronic cough (39%), asthma (37%), asthma with COPD (9%), COPD (13%) and bronchiectasis (3%). Total and differential cell counts were obtained from 86% of successful sputum samples. Induced sputum provided more viable samples than spontaneous expectorate. Approximately one-third of patients with asthma and one-fifth of patients with COPD experience eosinophilic bronchitis. Asthmatic patients with moderate to severe airflow obstruction had a greater number of sputum eosinophils. There was a significantly higher number of total cell counts and percentage of neutrophils in the sputum of COPD patients with moderate and severe airflow obstruction than in those with mild airflow obstruction. CONCLUSION: There is heterogeneity in the cellularity of sputum in various airway diseases. Patients with clinically stable airway diseases may have high sputum cell counts. During exacerbations, more patients may experience neutrophilic bronchitis. Severity of airflow obstruction is associated with eosinophilic bronchitis in patients with asthma, and neutrophilic bronchitis in patients with nonasthmatic COPD.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available