Chest
Volume 102, Issue 3, September 1992, Pages 882-886
Journal home page for Chest

Clinical Investigations
Expression of Alveolar Macrophage Adhesion Molecules in Pulmonary Sarcoidosis

https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.102.3.882Get rights and content

Beta-2-integrins belong to a family of leukocyte surface glycoproteins that are essential for immune functions of bronchoalveolar cells. The expression of three alpha chains designed as CD11a, CD11b, CD11c, a common beta chain CD18, and of a ligand for several integrins CD54 (ICAM-1) was studied on alveolar macrophages of patients with active and inactive sarcoidosis and in control subjects. The percentage of macrophages expressing CD11b (CR3) was significantly increased in patients with active sarcoidosis compared with patients who had inactive disease and control subjects. The adhesion molecule CD54 (ICAM-1) was detected on a higher percentage of alveolar macrophages in patients with active rather than inactive sarcoidosis and in control subjects. Since integrin-mediated adhesion seems to be important in macrophage-lymphocyte interactions during the immune response, higher expression of both CD11b and CD54 on sarcoid alveolar macrophages may he related to several immune abnormalities reported in pulmonary sarcoidosis.

Section snippets

Study Population

Twenty-three patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis (11 women and 12 men; mean age, 41.0 yr; range, 22 to 62 yr) were investigated. The diagnosis was based on consistent clinical features, along with biopsy evidence of noncaseating epithelioid cell granulomas in 16 cases and the characteristic highly specific increase (greater than 5.0) of the CD4/CD8 ratio in BAL in the remaining seven cases.15 According to radiologic staging, nine were type 1, 14 were type 2 and none was type 3. Twenty patients

Results

The total and differential cell counts and the CD4/ CD8 ratio in BAL fluid of patients with sarcoidosis and control subjects are shown in Table 2. The results of AM phenotyping are shown in Figures 1 and 2.

The percentage of CD11a-positive AM did not significantly differ among patients with active sarcoidosis (94.7 ± 5.1), inactive disease (92.6 ± 7.8) and the control group (89.3 ± 8.7 [ANOVA]).

The expression of CD11b was significantly increased in patients with active disease (83.4 ± 12.1)

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first study that analyzed the expression of the complete family of beta-2-integrins and its ligand ICAM-1 on AM in patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis and control subjects. Since corticosteroids have not been shown to modulate the expression of integrins in a previous study,18 patients undergoing treatment with corticosteroids were not excluded from this study. Similarly, we did not exclude smokers, since adherence19 and surface marker expression20 have been

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank G. Knautz for technical assistance and J. Reissigova for assistance in the statistical evaluation of the data.

References (36)

  • A Venet et al.

    Enhanced alveolar macrophage-mediated antigen-induced T-lymphocyte proliferation in sarcoidosis

    J Clin Invest

    (1985)
  • VM Lem et al.

    Bronchoalveolar cells from sarcoid patients demonstrate enhanced antigen presentation

    J Immunol

    (1985)
  • GA Rossi et al.

    Alveolar macrophage stimulation of T-cell proliferation in autologous mixed lymphocyte reactions: role of HLA-DR antigens

    Am Rev Respir Dis

    (1986)
  • F Clavel et al.

    Alveolar macrophage phagocytosis in sarcoidosis. The role of activated lymphocytes

    Ann NY Acad Sci

    (1986)
  • HB Pettersen et al.

    Phagocytosis of agarose beads by receptors for C3b (CR1) and iC3b (CR3) on alveolar macrophages from patients with sarcoidosis

    Scand J Immunol

    (1990)
  • U Costabel et al.

    Value of bronchoalveolar lavage lymphocyte subpopulations for the diagnosis of sarcoidosis

  • U Costabel et al.

    Pulmonary sarcoidosis: assessment of disease activity by lung lymphocyte subpopulations

    Klin Wochenschr

    (1983)
  • U Costabel et al.

    A new method for the demonstration of surface antigens on bronchoalveolar lavage cells

    Bull Eur Physiopathol Respir

    (1985)
  • Cited by (38)

    • Effect of variation in ITGAE on risk of sarcoidosis, CD103 expression, and chest radiography

      2009, Clinical Immunology
      Citation Excerpt :

      Recently, integrins have been an area of interest in (chronic) inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis [16,17] and SLE [18,19]. In sarcoidosis, increased expression of integrins VLA-4 and VLA-5 on BALF lymphocytes has been reported by Berlin et al. [31], and increased expression of β1 and β2-integrins on peripheral blood monocytes and alveolar macrophages has been found in patients with active sarcoidosis compared to patients with inactive disease [32–34]. Interestingly, radiographic staging showed that parenchymal involvement (stages II and higher) correlated with a significantly higher percentage of CD103 positive CD4+ lymphocytes [35,36].

    • Increased expression of CD16, CD69, and very late antigen-1 on blood monocytes in active sarcoidosis

      2008, Chest
      Citation Excerpt :

      Furthermore, Rubio et al demonstrated that interferonγ, a T-helper type 1 cytokine elevated in BAL lymphocytes in sarcoidosis,24 specifically induced VLA-1 expression on monocytes.25 In agreement with our findings, previous reports10,11 have shown increased expression of β2-integrins on peripheral blood monocytes and alveolar macrophages in patients with active sarcoidosis compared to patients with inactive disease, suggesting another integrin-regulated step in the monocyte differentiation and activation cascade. Taken together, up-regulation of VLA-1 expression might suggest a crucial role in monocyte recruitment to the lung and continuation of the inflammatory response in sarcoidosis.

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    The study was supported by the AFPR and the DAAD. Supported by grant No. 0071-2 from the Ministry of Health of Czech Republic.

    View full text