Myers Elizabeth J, Aamodt Samuel E, Huecksteadt Thomas P, Paine Robert, Mir-Kasimov Mustafa, Reilly Christopher A, Callahan Sean J, Sanders Karl A, Warren Kristi J
Research Service, Salt Lake City VA Medical Center, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Department of Neurology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Front Immunol. 2025 Aug 1;16:1555228. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1555228. eCollection 2025.
Asthma is a chronic airway inflammatory disorder that demonstrates a strong clinical bias in females of reproductive age. In this study we evaluated group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) that play a now well-defined role in allergy and asthma. ILC2 are rare immune cells that demonstrate a strong activation bias in females compared to males in both mice and humans. We hypothesized that ILC2 would be highly activated in people with asthma as compared to healthy, sex-matched controls.
Subjects with asthma were identified by medical records searching and confirmed through pre-clinic interviews regarding asthma diagnosis. Additional demographic and clinical data were collected from study questionnaires or retrospective chart review. Correlations were determined between immune activation and hormone levels for each study participant regardless of healthy or asthma status.
Results showed that within the asthma groups, female Veterans had higher circulating blood neutrophils compared to males, and males had higher eosinophils compared to females by complete blood cell count. ILC2 trended upwards in male Veterans with asthma compared to female Veterans with asthma (p = 0.086). Females with asthma had a marked reduction in CRTH2+ ILC2 in comparison to healthy female controls. The numbers of ILC2 in correlation to ovarian hormones were determined to show a significant inverse correlation with estrogen levels and ILC2 suggesting that estrogen may suppress ILC2 abundance in circulation.
Additional studies are necessary to determine whether this estrogen-effect extends to the lung and airways of people with asthma.
哮喘是一种慢性气道炎症性疾病,在育龄女性中表现出强烈的临床倾向。在本研究中,我们评估了在过敏和哮喘中发挥明确作用的2型固有淋巴细胞(ILC2)。ILC2是罕见的免疫细胞,在小鼠和人类中,与雄性相比,雌性表现出更强的激活倾向。我们假设与健康、性别匹配的对照组相比,哮喘患者的ILC2会被高度激活。
通过病历搜索确定哮喘患者,并通过关于哮喘诊断的临床前访谈进行确认。从研究问卷或回顾性病历审查中收集其他人口统计学和临床数据。无论健康或哮喘状态如何,均确定每位研究参与者的免疫激活与激素水平之间的相关性。
结果显示,在哮喘组中,通过全血细胞计数,女性退伍军人的循环血液中性粒细胞高于男性,男性的嗜酸性粒细胞高于女性。与患有哮喘的女性退伍军人相比,患有哮喘的男性退伍军人的ILC2呈上升趋势(p = 0.086)。与健康女性对照组相比,患有哮喘的女性CRTH2 + ILC2明显减少。确定ILC2数量与卵巢激素的相关性,结果显示与雌激素水平呈显著负相关,提示雌激素可能抑制循环中ILC2的丰度。
需要进一步研究以确定这种雌激素效应是否扩展至哮喘患者的肺部和气道。