GRO alpha and interleukin-8 in Pneumocystis carinii or bacterial pneumonia and adult respiratory distress syndrome

Abstract

Polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) are the predominant inflammatory cells recruited in acute lung injury. This study compares the concentration of interleukin-8 (IL-8) to those of GRO alpha, both of which are CXC chemokines, in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) in three acute pathologic states: bacterial pneumonia (BPN); adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS); and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Levels of both IL-8 and GRO alpha were below 5 pg/ml in 16 nonsmoking volunteers who served as controls. Despite more than twice as many neutrophils in the BALF of the BPN group (n = 12) than in the group with ARDS (n = 13), both groups had similar levels of IL-8, of 569 +/- 120 pg/ml and 507 +/- 96 pg/ml, respectively. The GRO alpha concentrations in the BPN and ARDS patients were respectively 3.3 and 3.4 times those of IL-8, reaching 1,870 +/- 314 pg/ml for the BPN and 1,699 +/- 377 for the ARDS patients. In the PCP group (n = 48, 45 human immunodeficiency virus [HIV]-positive, 3 HIV-negative), GRO alpha levels (897 +/- 172 pg/ml) were sevenfold higher than IL-8 levels (123 +/- 40 pg/ml). In all pathologic states there was a good correlation between GRO alpha and IL-8 (r = 0.53, p = 0.0001). GRO alpha or IL-8 both correlate with the absolute neutrophil number/ml when all groups were studied together (r = 0.52, p = 0.0001). Only in the PCP and ARDS groups did IL-8 correlate with the PMN number.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)