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Publication . Rufo, João; Barata, Luis Taborda; Lourenço, Olga

Asthma is usually misdiagnosed and under-treated in the elderly population, resulting in complications and increased severity to the patient. In this review, we describe some of the most important serum markers of asthma studied so far, reporting their outcomes and possible prediction of asthma in the elderly population.

2013-12Journal article

Restricted access

Serum biomarkers in elderly asthma

Publication . Rufo, João Pedro Cavaleiro; Lourenço, Olga Maria Marques

Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways that can affect all ages. It is usually undertreated in the elderly population, resulting in complications and increased severity for the patient. Different phenotypes may imply different treatments and therefore it becomes important to correctly determine which type of asthma the patient is suffering from. Biomarkers of asthma have been clinically studied in order to help discriminate among the different phenotypes of the disease, cytokines being among the most promising. Our main goal was to measure six serum cytokines, including IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12p70 and TNFα, in an elderly population with asthma. The population of this study included 16 elderly patients with allergic asthma, 20 elderly patients with non-allergic asthma, 9 elderly control individuals, as well as 11 young adult control individuals. The serum of the experimental subjects was quantified for the six aforementioned cytokines by flow cytometry, using the Cytometric Bead Array (CBA) Human Inflammatory Cytokines Kit (BD Biosciences). The results showed that the measured levels of TNF-α, IL-10 and IL-8 were increased in the non-allergic asthmatics group, although with no statistical significance. IL-6 was significantly increased in the elderly non-allergic asthmatic group, when compared to both control groups and when compared to the young adult controls alone, but no significant differences were found when comparing to the elderly control group separately. IL-1β median levels were shown to be elevated in the young adults control group, but also without a significant statistical difference. IL-12p70 was not detected in any subject. In conclusion, we could not define a pattern of changes in the measured cytokine levels related to phenotype differences or aging, although it is possible to notice a trend for increased levels of severity cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-8) in non-allergic asthmatic elderly individuals, suggesting that this phenotype of asthma is indeed more severe than its counterpart. So far, this is the only study that measured the aforementioned serum inflammatory cytokines in an elderly population with asthma.

2013-06Master thesis

Open access