The Expression Level Of Growth Factor Beta-1 In Induced Sputum Of Coal Miners

BackgroundThe pneumoconiosis disease that caused by contacting with productive dust is the most serious occupational disease in China. Because of the lack of specific treatment for pneumoconiosis disease, the mortality is extremely high, Therefore, it is importmant to monitor the early sensitive harmful effect indexes of dust in workplaces for evaluating of early harm, staying away from the dust exposure early for the high-risk workers, delaying the pneumoconiosis course, and prolonging the patient life. In recent years, the researchers of the pneumoconiosis study have valued the respiratory induced sputum technique as it has been applied in asthma disease diagnosis and treatment extensively. Induced sputum analysis is on the cards for using as a kind of dust regularly monitor for health workers, it can supplement and complete traditional monitoring methods such as occupational exposure history taken, environmental monitoring, etc, and is helpful for the diagnosis of occupational lung disease. Transfoming growth factor beta plays an important role in regulating the proliferation and splition of lung fibroblasts,also the synthesis and degradation process of collagen.The relationship of transfoming growth factor beta with pulmonary fibrosis is highly concerned. Among all factors which cause pulmonary fibrosis, the activation of transforming growth factor beta is believed to be the biological marker of pμlmonary fibrosis progression. Especially, TGF-beta 1 is the strongest factorof fibrosis.ObjectivesStudies on injury repair, structure reconstruction of TGF-beta 1 has become the focus. Therefore, this study selected TGF-beta 1 as the biological indicators to measure its levels in different coal miners (the nonpneumoconiosis and pneumoconiosis patients), to analyse its correlation with the workers picking up dust level and pneumoconiosis patient's lung pathological progress, so that to provide a new method for further strengthen and improve the early hazard prevention and control for dust exposure of coal miners.Methods1. Respiratory tract induced sputum:115 non-pneumoconiosis workers (divided into different length of dusts exposers and non-exposers), and 32 patients with pneumoconiosis (including the corresponding control) were recuited to collect sputum by using respiratory luring sputum.2. Cell count and classification in sputum:The sputum cell will be totally counted and classified after treatment as dealing with dithiothreitol sputum first, hemotoxylin and eosin staining then. The major inflammatory cells in different subjects were deteceted and analyzed for sputum cytology feature in each group.3. Testing expression level in phlegm cells for target gene TGF-betal mRNA: Total RNA of sputum cells was extracted and then transcriptased to cDNA first chain. The expression level for TGF-betal mRNA was tested by using the method of fluorescent quantitation-polymerase chain reaction.Results1. All the research subjects could accept induced sputum technique, and the success rate was 98.6%. Induced sputum presented ashen white or yellow, viscous, there were some black coal-dusts in the sputum for the dust exposured workers and pneumoconiosis patients. The volume for each sputum sample was about 2ml. Squamous epithelial cells accounted for (8.94+3.59)%, the cell vitality was (78.32 +6.50)%.2. The ratio of macrophages for the workers who exposd over 10 years were(50.53+11.12)%, which were significantly higher than that of the other groups (P< 0.05).3. The express of TGF-β1 mRNA for the workers who exposed to dust over 10 years was 1.21 times than those who exposed less than 1 year (concrol group) (P< 0.05).4. The TGF-β1 mRNA express levels for stage I and II (combined with III) pneumoconiosis patients were 1.53 and 1.52 times compared to that of control group (all P< 0.05). Conclusions1. The change of respiratory macrophages proportion may participate in the pathogenesis of pneumoconiosis diseases'progression and can be used as a biological marker for disease process. The induced sputum method can be applied to monitor sputum cytology changes for the workers exposed to dust.2. The stageⅠ,ⅡI andⅢpneumoconiosis patients exposed to dust over 10 years have significantly higer levels of TGF-β1 mRNA express. TGF-β1 may be involved in the pneumoconiosis diseases'occurrence and development, and can be used as a biological marker to screen high-risk individuals and to monitor the disease's progression.