Immunoendocrine interactions in patients with pulmonary obstrutive disease.

MARAVAL, M. B; GARDEÑEZ, W; LIOI, S; VILLAR, S. R; BOTTASSO, O.A.; SPINELLI, S.V.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión Conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencias; 2017

SAI, SAIC, SAIB, etc

Resistance to corticosteroids in patients with severe asthma and with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an important barrier to an effective treatment. Different lines of evidence indicate that glucocorticoids (GCs) resistance is the result of significant changes in the cellular microenvironment that occur over time during disease progression. Several factors have been involved in this process and recent findings indicate that miRNAs may also be playing a role in the development of GC resistance during chronic inflammatory states. In this work we contribute to the characterization of the immunoendocrine interactions observed in patients with both severe asthma and COPD as a preliminary approach to subsequent studies on the role of sRNA in the development of GC resistance in these diseases. Both sputum and blood samples from volunteers (n=20) were employed to compare the events occurring at the lung with what happens in the peripheral compartments. As expected, most asthmatic patients, and some with COPD showed abnormally high IgE blood levels and mild leukocytosis, with elevated eosinophils. Interestingly, in most cases sputum cytology did not show an eosinophilic infiltrate and neither of these findings correlated with the severity/stage of the diseases. Levels of endogenous cortisol were also quantified to confirm that there is no adrenal suppression in these patients despite treatment with inhaled corticosteroids. Also, RNA was purified from both sputum and blood samples and CG receptor transcript and miR-223, let-7 and tRNAh Glu were quantified by RT-qPCR, being able to detect sRNAs in all analyzed samples, including extracellular fractions. In summary, these results provide a first approach for the better understanding of the immunoendocrine alterations associated with pulmonary obstructive diseases and present a useful experimental design for the study of regulatory mechanisms mediated by miRNAs in secretions of patients with asthma and COPD.