Serum IL-8 and VEGFA are Two Promising Diagnostic Biomarkers of Asthma-COPD Overlap Syndrome

Abstract

Background

Asthma-COPD overlap (ACO; previously referred to as asthma-COPD overlap syndrome) is characterized by persistent airflow limitation consistent with COPD, together with several distinguishing features of asthma. Asthma-COPD overlap syndrome is a condition of mixing symptoms of asthma and COPD, because of its complexity, it is difficult to find effective diagnostic markers in clinic.

Purpose

Our aims were to detect the expression of serum cytokines in patients with asthma, explore the diagnostic potential of differential serum cytokines in ACOS.

Patients and Methods

Ninety asthmatic patients were divided into ACOS group and non-ACOS group according to the major and minor criteria of ACOS, 15 kinds of cytokines including IL-3, IL-4, IL-8, IL-9, IL-13, IL-17A, VEGFA, VEGFC, VEGFD, bFGF, Fit-1 PIGF, Tie-2 were detected by MSD, and IL-27 and TGF-beta were determined by ELISA assay.

Results

The serum levels of IL-9, VEGFA and PIGF in patients with ACOS were significantly higher than those in non-ACOS group ( P<0.05, respectively), while the level of IL-8 and IL-17A in subjects with ACOS was lower than that in the non-ACOS group ( P<0.05, respectively). We analyzed the correlation between several difference factors and FEV1/FVC% in the ACOS group, found VEGFA was negatively correlated with FEV1/FVC%, while IL-8 and IL-17A were positively correlated with FEV1/FVC%. Finally, three correlation factors were analyzed by ROC curve for the occurrence of ACOS.

Conclusion

The results suggested that IL-8 was highly sensitive and VEGFA was highly specificity, both of which could be used as biomarkers for the diagnosis of ACOS.