Serum rheumatoid factor and peripheral blood eosinophil counts in patients with bronchial asthma

These days some reports say that bronchial asthma, especially severe asthma, is systemic inflammatory and its severity correlates with eosinophil counts. Some patients with asthma have positive tests for rheumatoid factor (RF) which is detected in systemic hyper immunoreactive desease such as rheuma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Arerugi Vol. 53; no. 12; p. 1210
Main Authors:	Kobayashi, Yoshiki, Yasuba, Hirotaka, Kita, Hideo, Hamada, Kazuyuki, Chihara, Junichi
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	Japanese
Published:	Japan 01-12-2004
Subjects:	Adolescent Adult Aged Aged, 80 and over Asthma - immunology Asthma - pathology Eosinophils Female Humans Leukocyte Count Male Middle Aged Rheumatoid Factor - blood Severity of Illness Index
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Summary:	These days some reports say that bronchial asthma, especially severe asthma, is systemic inflammatory and its severity correlates with eosinophil counts. Some patients with asthma have positive tests for rheumatoid factor (RF) which is detected in systemic hyper immunoreactive desease such as rheumatoid arthritis. So we investigated each of these factors in asthmatic patients. We randomly selected 100 asthmatics from regular outpatients of our hospital. In a positive RF level group (over 21 IU/ml), Eosinophil counts were significantly higher than those in a negative RF level group. RF levels were significantly and positively correlated with the logarithm of eosinophil count. And in severe groups (patients with severe asthma, treated with high dose inhaled steroids, and with history of systemic steroids use for the last one month), RF levels were significantly higher than those in other groups. Our result suggested that RF levels reflect eosinophilia and asthma severity.
ISSN:	0021-4884