A Study On Viral Infections In Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Objective : The aetiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) is very complex, and the pathogensis of COPD is not clear.Respiratory infections are known to exacerbate clinical symptom of COPD, but the role of infection in the pathogensis of COPD is controversial issue. To study the relation between viral infection and COPD,and the mechanism that virus lead COPD, we detected the level of IgM and IgG by an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)Methods: (l)The sera from 91 patients with acute exacerbations of COPD,42 patients with stable COPD and 25 healthy subjects were all tested for specific IgM and IgG of respiratary syncytial virus(RSV) herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), parainfluenza virus(PIV) adenovirus(ADV) and cytomegalovirus(CMV) with ELISA.(2) The IgM positive patients obtained from above and normal controls were examined with flow cytometry for T lymphocyte-subsets.Results: (1) The positive rates of IgM of RSV, HSV-1 PFV ADV CMVwerel2.09% 7.69% 5.49%, 2.20%, 3.30%. The positive rates of IgM with acute exacerbations of COPD compared with those in patients with stable COPDand healthy subjects are significantly different There is no significantly difference between the positive rate of IgG in patients with acute exacerbations of COPD(47.28% 40.66%, 12.09%, 14.29%, 9.89%) and that in stable COPD (42.48%, 33.33%, 11.9% 7.14%, 7.14%) (P>0.05) .But the positive rates of IgG in patients with acute exacerbations of COPD and stable COPD, compared with healthy subjects (0, 8.0%, 0, 0, 0) , were significantly different (PO.01) .(2) The positive expression rates of CDs, CD4, CDg, CD^CDgin IgM positive group were(62+7)%, (30+4)%, (31+3)%, (1.06+0.16)%, and the positive expression of normal control group were(65+6)%,(40+5)%, (28+3)%, (1.52+0.24)%. In patients of IgM positive group, compared with normal control group, the expression of CD4 and CD4/CD8 was significantly lower, the expression of CD8 was significantly higher (PO.01) , but the expression of CD3 was no lower apparently (P>0.05).Conclusion: Virus infection is a rather frequent event in acute exacerbations of COPD, and the mechanism of COPD is relative to virus infection.