A 69-year-old female complaining of fever, cough and dyspnea was admitted to our hospital. Chest X-ray examination showed bilateral infiltration shadows that increased in spite of antibiotics therapy. Broncho-alveolar lavage fluid analysis demonstrated an increased lymphocytes with an inverted CD4/CD8 ratio. Histopathology of lung biopsy specimens showed organizing granulation tissue in the lum...

Little information is available on the specific role of alveolar macrophages (AMs) in modulating local cellular reactions to inhaled allergens in atopic asthma. We investigated the influence of alveolar macrophages obtained by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) on the proliferative responses of lavage and peripheral lymphocytes from 12 patients with atopic asthma, 6 nonasthmatic symptomatic atopic su...

Broncho alveolar lavage is the most commonly used diagnostic tool for confirming alveolar hemorrhage. Golde has introduced a ranking score, based on the hemosiderin content of macrophages which enables ranking cells from 0 to 4 based on the degree of Prussian blue stain. We propose a complete image analysis scheme to automatically perform both the extraction of the cellular objects and the rank...

A 34-year-old man with bronchial asthma was introduced to our clinic because his blood tests showed a white blood cell count of 25,200/μL with a differential of 70% eosinophils, and chest computed tomography revealed nonsegmental multi-lobar consolidation. Bronchoscopy was performed and yellow broncho-alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was collected (Picture 1). The supernatant of BALF was still yell...

BACKGROUND Inhalation of swine dust causes airway inflammation with influx of inflammatory cells, predominantly neutrophils, into the lungs. A study was undertaken to determine whether or not exposure to swine dust induces release of interleukin 8 (IL-8) into upper and lower airways and how this possible release is related to cellular influx. A further aim was to study the relationship between ...

s:696:"Pulmonary alveolar microlithiasis (PAM) is classified as an elective dysmetabolic thesaurotic pneumoalveolitis and characterized by the presence within the alveoli of the lungs of myriad of tiny calculi. The classic presentation of the chest radiography is unmistakable with multiple small "sand-like" opacities diffusely involving both lung fields. We present a case of male infertility fo...

Background Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) has a stable place in the diagnostics of various forms of the diffuse parenchymal lung disease. The analysis of cellular components of the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) informs us about inflammatory and immune processes in the alveolar space. This can be very helpful in the diagnostics of many interstitial lung diseases (ILDs), but also in the diagn...

BACKGROUND Interplays between Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the etiological agent of tuberculosis (TB) in human and host professional phagocytes, namely macrophages (Mphis) and dendritic cells (DCs), are central to immune protection against TB and to TB pathogenesis. We and others have recently shown that the C-type lectin dendritic cell-specific intercellular adhesion molecule-3 grabbing noninte...

BACKGROUND The 11 human cysteine cathepsins are proteases mainly located in the endolysosomal compartment of all cells and within the exocytosis pathways of some secretory cell types. Cathepsin H (Ctsh) has amino- and endopeptidase activities. In vitro studies have demonstrated Ctsh involvement in the processing and secretion of the pulmonary surfactant protein B (SP-B). Furthermore, Ctsh is hi...

We tested the novel hypothesis that neutrophils in the lung or the airspaces may produce hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) in ventilated patients with acute respiratory failure. Neutrophils were purified from blood and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid samples from 16 mechanically ventilated patients who underwent BAL for a diagnostic workup of ventilator-acquired pneumonia. Most of the patients ...