Serum macrophage migration inhibitory factor as a potential biomarker to evaluate therapeutic response in patients with allergic asthma: an exploratory study     

Zhu  Huiyuan  Yan  Shaochun  Wu  Jingshuo  Zhang  Zhong  Li  Xiaolin  Liu  Zheng  Ma  Xing  Zhou  Lina  Zhang  Lin  Feng  Mingming  Geng  Yiwei  Zhang  Aixin  Janciauskiene  Sabina  Xu  Aiguo 《Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B》2021,22(6):512-520

Background: Previous studies have shown that macrophage migration inhibitory factor(MIF) is involved in the pathogenesis of asthma. This study aimed to investigate whether serum MIF reflects a therapeutic response in allergic asthma.Methods: We enrolled 30 asthmatic patients with mild-to-moderate exacerbations and 20 healthy controls, analyzing the parameter levels of serum MIF, serum total immunoglobulin E(tIgE), peripheral blood eosinophil percentage(EOS%), and fractional exhaled nitric oxide(FeNO). Lung function indices were used to identify disease severity and therapeutic response.Results: Our study showed that all measured parameters in patients were at higher levels than those of controls. After one week of treatment, most parameter levels decreased significantly except for serum tIgE. Furthermore, we found that serum MIF positively correlated with EOS% as well as FeNO, but negatively correlated with lung function indices. Receiver operator characteristic(ROC) curve analysis indicated that among the parameters, serum MIF exhibited a higher capacity to evaluate therapeutic response. The area under the curve(AUC) of MIF was 0.931, with a sensitivity of 0.967 and a specificity of 0.800.Conclusions: Our results suggested that serum MIF may serve as a potential biomarker for evaluating therapeutic response in allergic asthma with mild-to-moderate exacerbations.  相似文献