Chest
Original ResearchCOPDVariability in Small Airway Epithelial Gene Expression Among Normal Smokers
Section snippets
Study Population
After signing informed consent, subjects were evaluated in the Weill Medical College of Cornell University National Institutes of Health General Clinical Research Center under an Institutional Review Board-approved clinical protocol. They were assessed by standard history, physical examination, CBC count, coagulation studies, liver function tests, urine studies, chest radiography, ECG, and pulmonary function testing. Fifty-four subjects in this study included three groups (Table 1): normal
Small Airway Epithelium
The cell number, purity, and differential cell counts for the samples recovered from the small airway epithelium of the normal nonsmokers, normal smokers, and smokers with COPD were similar (Table 1). A range of 2.5 to 10.1 × 106 cells were recovered from all groups (p>0.08, comparing all samples by ANOVA). There were fewer inflammatory cells (p < 0.03) and secretory cells (p < 0.01) and more basal cells (p < 0.02) in nonsmokers than in the other two groups, although the proportion of ciliated
Discussion
In this study, we have assessed individual-to-individual variability in cigarette smoking-induced changes in messenger RNA expression levels in the small airway epithelium, the cell population that takes the brunt of the stress of smoking and the initial site of pathologic changes of COPD.1, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28 The data demonstrate that among the 201 probe sets representing 152 genes in the small airway epithelium that smoking induces to be significantly up-regulated or down-regulated in normal
Acknowledgment
We thank J. Xiang in the Micoarray Core Facility for help with the chip evaluation, A. Heguy for help with data analysis, and T. Virgin-Bryan and N. Mohamed for help with preparing the article.
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Cited by (0)
These studies were supported in part by R01 HL074326; U01-HL084936; GCRC M01RR00047; and the Rogers Memorial Fund, Los Angeles, CA.
No conflicts of interest exist for any of the authors.
Reproduction of this article is prohibited without written permission from the American College of Chest Physicians (www.chestjournal.org/misc/reprints.html).