Genetic factors, environmental exposure, immune mechanisms and development of wheezing and asthma in childhood.

Author(s)

Angela Falcai

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB/SDI)
• Defense date: 2010-11-25

Examining board members

Antonio Condino Neto; Paulo Augusto Moreira Camargos; Sonia Jancar Negro; Momtchilo Russo; Dirceu Solé

• Advisor: Antonio Condino Neto

Abstract

Although the great advance in the study of asthma and wheezing, there are numerous controversies about the involvement of endotoxin exposure, genetic background and cellular activation. We investigated the involvement of environmental endotoxin exposure and the role of LPS in the development of phenotypes wheezing and asthma. For experiments we selected wheezing and non-wheezing, and asthmatic and non-asthmatic children, and their blood collected and the PBMC cultured with LPS. The supernatant was collected for analysis cytokines by ELISA, and analyzed CD14 and TLR4 polymorphisms by PCR-RFLP. There was no relationship between environmental endotoxin exposure and the framework of wheezing. We observed that LPS-stimulated PBMC of wheezing and asthmatic children produce lower levels of IL-12 and IFN-<font face=\"Symbol\">&#947 when compared with non-wheezing and non-asthmatic children. The polymorphisms TLR4 and CD14 were not associated with wheezing or asthma. Our data suggest that not only Th2 polarization is important to develop these diseases, but also a decrease in Th1 response. (AU)