Role of induced sputum and NLR, PLR in the assessment of asthma

Objective To investigate the role of induced sputum and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in assessing the severity of asthma patients. Methods The clinical data of 85 patients with acute asthma who were hospitalized from January 2017 to January 2018 in the First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University were retrospectively reviewed.General information such as age, sex, body mass index (BMI), duration of disease and smoking rate were collected.Induced sputum, blood cell analysis and calculation of NLR and PLR, pulmonary function, arterial blood gas and other clinical data.According to the severity of the disease, it was divided into three groups: light, medium and severe.According to the induced sputum, it was divided into four groups: eosinophil (EOS) type, neutrophil (NEU) type, mixed (MIX) type, and paucigranulocytic (PAU) type, and NLR and PLR were compared.The difference between the severity of the disease and the different phenotypes. Results The phenotypic composition ratio of asthma patients with different severity was statistically significant (χ2=12.42, P<0.05). NLR and PLR were significantly higher in patients with severe asthma than in mild to moderate (χ2=16.70, 11.67, both P<0.01). sputum EOS%, sputum NEU% and blood EOS%, blood NEU% were compared between the four groups of inflammatory phenotypes, the difference was statistically significant (χ2=62.76, 68.17, 6.96, 28.50, all P<0.01). NLR and PLR were significantly elevated in patients with NEU type asthma, and the difference was statistically significant among the four groups (χ2=11.34, 3.01, both P<0.05). Conclusions The higher the NLR and PLR values, the higher the sputum NEU%, the greater the possibility of NEU type asthma, the more serious the disease, and the worse the pulmonary function. Key words: Asthma; Sputum; Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio; Platelet-lymphocyte ratio