[Early effects of intravenous steroid therapy on cell recruitment in sputum of chronic asthmatics].
Steroid is the key drug in the asthma therapy but not well known to play the role on the airway inflammatory cells. We examined sputum cells of acute excerbated 11 chronic adult asthmatics before and 2-3 hours after intravenous steroid and aminophylline therapy. There was no changes in the percent count of living cell, epithelial cell, metachlomatic cell, macrophage and neutrophil before and after treatment. Lymphocyte was 3.3 +/- 6.5% before and 2.6 +/- 2.0% after treatment. CD4 and CD25 double positive cell (CD4+/CD25+) was 0.7 +/- 0.5 and 1.2 +/- 0.9% and CD8+/CD25+ cell was 0.4 +/- 0.4 and 0.6 +/- 0.5% before and after treatment respectively. These changes were not significant. Eosinophil percent count did not decrease significantly but EG1+/EG2+ cell decreased from 6.7 +/- 7.8 to 4.3 +/- 5.2% significantly (p < 0.05). In the light of no decrease of activated T lymphocytes (CD25+ cells), we concluded that failure of tissue eosinophil response to lymphokines might result in a decrease in activated eosinophil count.