Neutrophil chemotactic and anti-apoptotic activity generated by EGF-induced bronchial epithelial cells.

<p>Conditioned media (CM) from 9 healthy control subjects, 8 mild and 11 Mod/Sev asthmatics were assessed for neutrophil chemotactic and anti-apoptotic activity as described in <i>Methods.</i> (A) Neutrophil chemotaxis was significantly induced by stimulation of PBECs with EGF in HC (p = 0.021) and Mod/Sev asthma (p = 0.010) but not in MA (0.093). The chemotactic activity in EGF-CM was related to the clinical severity of asthma (linear contrast test p = 0.010) (<i>n</i> = 8 donors). (B) Neutrophil apoptosis was assessed after 20 h of culture by FACS analysis of Annexin-V^FITC/PI staining and both basal and EGF-CM from the asthma-derived PBECs, but not from HC, contained significant neutrophil anti-apoptotic activity when compared to SFM (MA, p = 0.047 and Mod/Sev, p = 0.014; HC, p = 0.603, respectively). The anti-apoptotic activity in basal-CM and EGF-CM increased in relation to disease severity (p = 0.046 and 0.009, respectively, as assessed by trend analysis), (<i>n</i> = 7 donors). Repeated one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni; ^†p<0.05, ^††p<0.01 and ^†††p<0.001 compared to SFM-treated neutrophils. *p<0.05 <i>vs.</i> basal-CM.