重症難治性喘息におけるIV型アレルギー反応に関する研究 第2編 カンジダ抗原による末梢血単核球由来の好中球遊走活性の検討

The role of cellular immunity in the pathogenesis of intractable asthma was studied. Increased IL-2 production in intractable asthma patients as the result of lymphocyte response to Candida antigen was shown in the previous paper. Although the exact role of cellular immunity in the pathogenesis of intractable asthma is still obscure, various activities of lymphokines are suspected of contributing to intractable asthma. While neutrophils are well known to release various chemical mediators, neutrophils in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) has been reported to increase in patients with intractable asthma. The accumulation of neutrophils could be important in the pathogenesis of intractable asthma. Therefore, neutrophil chemotactic activity (NCA) derived from mononuclear cell culture with Candida antigen was studied. High NCA was observed in patients with intractable asthma in comparison with patients with non-intractable asthma and normal controls. Intractable asthma patients raceiving prednisolone at a done of over 10mg/day showed less NCA than patients receiving prednisolone at a dose of under 10mg/day. NCA levels in the culture supernatant correlated with IL-2 levels in the same culture supernatant. It seemed likely that NCA is derived at least in part, from the lymphocyte blastogenic response to Candida antigen.