Recently, an increased number of mast cells have been reported in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) of patients with farmer's lung disease. Some authors pointed out the pathogenetic importance of mast cells in farmer's lung on the basis of their correlation with the activity of the disease, with the BAL lymphocyte counts, and with the markers of lung fibrosis. To determine whether BAL reflects...

An in vivo rat model was used to evaluate the effects of Escherichia coli pneumonia on lung function and surfactant in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). Total extracellular surfactant was increased in infected rats compared with controls. BAL phospholipid content in infected rats correlated with the severity of alveolar-capillary leak as reflected in lavage protein levels (R(2) = 0.908, P < 0.0001)...

We have evaluated the Platelia Aspergillus enzyme immunoassay for detection of galactomannan in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) specimens in solid organ transplant patients with aspergillosis. The precision and reproducibility in serum or BAL to which galactomannan was added were similar. Sensitivity was 81.8% in patients with aspergillosis, and specificity was 95.8% in lung transplant patients wh...

BACKGROUND Biomarkers are urgently needed for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of lung transplant chronic graft dysfunction. Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) has been used in the past as proximal fluid for biomarker discovery in various lung diseases including chronic graft dysfunction (CGD). The current study describes the proteomic analysis of BAL fluids collected from 4 asymptomatic pos...

BACKGROUND It has been proven that cytokeratins (CKs) are useful tumor markers for the follow-up, treatment monitoring and prognosis evaluation of lung cancer and among these, tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA) plays an important role. Nevertheless, only a small number of studies have been reported about their diagnostic capacity. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) can be divided into two fractions: br...

A 51-year-old woman who had been on steroid therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) developed a high fever 3 days after visiting a hot spring resort. Chest X-ray films revealed an interstitial, pneumonia-like shadow in the left lung field, which increased rapidly with a worsening of her symptoms. She died of multiple organ failure one week after the onset of the pneumonia. Although the s...

Recently, increased proportions of OKT 4+ helper T-lymphocytes have been reported in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid of patients with active sarcoidosis. In this study we were interested in T-cell subsets of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a disease characterized by a similar increase in BAL T-lymphocytes as active sarcoidosis. We applied an immunoperoxidase method performed on glass slides us...

The adverse effects of petrodiesel exhaust exposure on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems are well recognized. While biofuels such as rapeseed methyl ester (RME) biodiesel may have ecological advantages, the exhaust generated may cause adverse health effects. In the current study, we investigated the responses of bioactive lipid mediators in human airways after biodiesel exhaust exposur...

A 38-year-old man was hospitalized in our university hospital because of pulmonary opacities with bilateral hilar and mediastinal lymphadenopathy seen on chest radiograph. Eosinophilia was observed in the circulation and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. Histological examination revealed noncaseating epithelioid granulomas and eosinophilic infiltration in the lung. Based on these findings, a ...

Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was performed on 28 asthma patients, 7 patients with emphysema and 11 control subjects. Total and differential cell counts were performed and cellular metabolic activity was assessed using luminol and lucigenin amplified chemiluminescence. BAL supernatants were assayed for platelet-activating factor (PAF) and lyso-PAF using a sensitive guinea-pig bioassay. Eight of ...