查看文章

Previous studies have identified clinical or inflammatory phenotypes of asthma on the basis of clinical and demographic parameters or sputum cell counts; however, few studies have defined transcriptional phenotypes of asthma.

To investigate asthma phenotypes at a transcriptional level by using gene expression profiling of induced sputum.

Induced sputum samples were collected from 59 people with asthma with a mean age of 58 years and an FEV₁% predicted of 76%, and 69% were taking inhaled corticosteroids. Thirteen healthy controls without asthma were also assessed. Inflammatory cell counts were performed, and RNA was extracted from selected sputum. Transcriptional profiles were generated (Illumina Humanref-8 V2) and analyzed by using GeneSpring GX11.

Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of gene expression profiles in asthma revealed 3 …