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. 2017 Oct 30;18(1):181.
doi: 10.1186/s12931-017-0663-1.

Neutrophil extracellular traps in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

Anne Jan van der Meer  1 , Sacha Zeerleder  2   3 , Dana C Blok  4 , Liesbeth M Kager  4 , Ivar O Lede  5 , Wahid Rahman  6 , Rumana Afroz  6 , Aniruddha Ghose  6 , Caroline E Visser  5 , Abu Shahed Md Zahed  6 , Md Anwar Husain  7 , Khan Mashrequl Alam  7 , Pravat Chandra Barua  8 , Mahtabuddin Hassan  6 , Md Abu Tayab  9 , Arjen M Dondorp  10 , Tom van der Poll  4   11
Affiliations

Neutrophil extracellular traps in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

Anne Jan van der Meer et al. Respir Res. .

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a devastating infectious disease causing many deaths worldwide. Recent investigations have implicated neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in the host response to tuberculosis. The aim of the current study was to obtain evidence for NETs release in the circulation during human tuberculosis. For this we measured the plasma concentrations of nucleosomes in conjunction with neutrophil elastase, in 64 patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis and 32 healthy controls. Patients with active tuberculosis had elevated plasma levels of nucleosomes and elastase when compared with local healthy blood donors. Furthermore nucleosome and elastase levels showed a positive correlation. These findings provide the first evidence for the release of NETs in the circulation of patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the National Research Ethics Committee, Bangladesh Medical Research Council, Bangladesh and the Oxford Tropical Research Ethics Committee, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (OXTREC 35–09). Written informed consent was obtained from all study subjects or next-of-kin by a native Bengali speaker.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Leukocyte counts, neutrophil counts, plasma levels of nucleosomes, elastase and factor VII–activating protease in patients with pulmonary. Total leukocyte counts (a) and neutrophil counts (b) in blood; plasma concentrations of nucleosomes (c) and elastase-α1-antitrypsin (d), the correlation between nucleosome and elastase levels as determined by Spearman’s rho test (e); plasma levels of factor VII–activating protease (FSAP)-α2-antiplasmin complexes (f). Data are from healthy blood donors (n = 32) and tuberculosis patients (n = 61), and shown as box-and-whisker diagrams depicting the median, the smallest observation, lower quartile, median, upper quartile and largest observation. ****P < 0.0001
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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