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- Title
Sarcoidosis and Tuberculosis Cytokine Profiles: Indistinguishable in Bronchoalveolar Lavage but Different in Blood.
- Authors
Thillai, Muhunthan; Eberhardt, Christian; Lewin, Alex M.; Potiphar, Lee; Hingley-Wilson, Suzie; Sridhar, Saranya; Macintyre, Jonathan; Kon, Onn Min; Wickremasinghe, Melissa; Wells, Athol; Weeks, Mark E.; Mitchell, Donald; Lalvani, Ajit
- Abstract
Background: The clinical, radiological and pathological similarities between sarcoidosis and tuberculosis can make disease differentiation challenging. A complicating factor is that some cases of sarcoidosis may be initiated by mycobacteria. We hypothesised that immunological profiling might provide insight into a possible relationship between the diseases or allow us to distinguish between them. Methods: We analysed bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid in sarcoidosis (n = 18), tuberculosis (n = 12) and healthy volunteers (n = 16). We further investigated serum samples in the same groups; sarcoidosis (n = 40), tuberculosis (n = 15) and healthy volunteers (n = 40). A cross-sectional analysis of multiple cytokine profiles was performed and data used to discriminate between samples. Results: We found that BAL profiles were indistinguishable between both diseases and significantly different from healthy volunteers. In sera, tuberculosis patients had significantly lower levels of the Th2 cytokine interleukin-4 (IL-4) than those with sarcoidosis (p = 0.004). Additional serum differences allowed us to create a linear regression model for disease differentiation (within-sample accuracy 91%, cross-validation accuracy 73%). Conclusions: These data warrant replication in independent cohorts to further develop and validate a serum cytokine signature that may be able to distinguish sarcoidosis from tuberculosis. Systemic Th2 cytokine differences between sarcoidosis and tuberculosis may also underly different disease outcomes to similar respiratory stimuli.
- Subjects
SARCOIDOSIS; TUBERCULOSIS; CYTOKINES; IRRIGATION (Medicine); BRONCHOALVEOLAR lavage; BLOOD testing
- Publication
PLoS ONE, 2012, Vol 7, Issue 7, p1
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0038083