The neuraminic acid content of sputum from 48 men with early chronic bronchitis has been estimated in samples collected over a period of three years. The results are compared with those from 29 advanced bronchitic patients and are related to the clinical features of both groups and to the physical and biological properties of the sputum. A seasonal variation in neuraminic acid content has been ...

Sputum obtained from patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) is highly viscous and often heterogeneous in bacterial distribution. Adding dithiothreitol (DTT) is the standard method for liquefaction prior to processing sputum for molecular detection assays. To determine if DTT treatment homogenizes the bacterial distribution within sputum, we measured the difference in mean total bacterial abundance ...

Itraconazole diffusion in sputum was studied in 11 cystic fibrosis patients with allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. There was a high interindividual variability in sputum itraconazole concentration and sputum/serum drug concentration ratio. Three children had sputum drug concentrations before oral administration that were lower than the itraconazole MIC at which 90% of Aspergillus fumigat...

Sputum is a complex specimen consisting of a primary network comprised of linked mucin molecules and a secondary network composed of filamentous actin, cell debris and DNA. Other components of sputum are leukocytes, proteoglycans, inflammatory mediators and elastin fibres. Embedded within this matrix are bacteria which are targeted for clinical diagnosis. This is further complicated in tubercul...

The opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes persistent airway infections in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). To establish these chronic infections, P. aeruginosa must grow and proliferate within the highly viscous sputum in the lungs of CF patients. In this study, we used Affymetrix GeneChip microarrays to investigate the physiology of P. aeruginosa grown using CF sputum a...

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common lung disease characterized by breathing difficulty as a consequence of narrowed airways. Previous studies have shown that COPD is correlated with neutrophil infiltration into the airways through chemotactic migration. However, whether neutrophil chemotaxis can be used to characterize and diagnose COPD is not well established. In the prese...

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends collection of two sputum samples for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis, with at least one being an early morning (EM) using smear microscopy. It remains unclear whether this is necessary even when sputum culture is employed. Here, we determined the diagnostic yield from spot and the incremental yield from the EM sputum sample cultures among TB-suspected ...

Aspergillus fumigatus sensitization and culture in asthma are associated with disease severity and lung function impairment, but their relationship with airway inflammation is poorly understood. We investigated the profile of 24 sputum inflammatory mediators in A. fumigatus culture-positive or-negative moderate-to-severe asthmatics. Fifty-two subjects were recruited from a single center. A. fum...

Twenty four patients with acute infective exacerbations of chronic bronchitis received amoxycillin alone or in combination with erdosteine (a mucolytic agent) for a week in a double blind, placebo controlled study. Clinical assessment scores, body temperature, serum and sputum amoxycillin concentrations, and sputum culture results were recorded in each group. Erdosteine significantly increased ...