ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Panminerva Medica 2001 December;43(4):257-61

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Plasma levels of endothelin-1 increase in patients with sarcoidosis and fall after disease remission

Letizia C., Danese A., Reale M. G., Caliumi C., Delfini E., Subioli S., Cerci S., D’Erasmo E.

From the Department of Clinical Science, Chair of Internal Medicine *Department of Experimental Medicine and Pathology, University “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

Back­ground. Sar­coi­do­sis is a chron­ic system­ic dis­ease, char­ac­ter­ized by an imbal­ance of immu­nity pro­cess­es and the pres­ence of gra­nu­lo­ma.
Endo­the­lin-1, a new vasoac­tive and bron­cho­con­stric­tive pep­tide, is a pow­er­ful mito­gen for ­smooth mus­cle ­cells and fibro­blasts and ­plays a ­role in the inflam­ma­tion ­state. We pos­tu­late ­that endo­the­lin-1 has a ­role in sar­coi­do­sis.
Meth­ods. We stud­ied the behav­iour of cir­cu­lat­ing lev­els of endo­the­lin-1 in 20 ­patients ­with sar­coi­do­sis and its cor­re­la­tion ­with ­some bio­chem­i­cal param­e­ters of activity dis­ease, ­such as eryth­ro­cyte sed­i­men­ta­tion ­rate (ESR) and ser­um angio­ten­sin-con­vert­ing ­enzyme (­SACE). We meas­ured ser­um lev­els of ESR, ­SACE, cal­cium and plas­ma endo­the­lin-1 lev­els in all ­patients at the begin­ning of the ­study and ­one ­again in 9 ­patients ­with clin­i­cal-bio­chem­i­cal remis­sion of dis­ease ­after ster­oid treat­ment.
­Results. In ­patients ­with sar­coi­do­sis, cir­cu­lat­ing lev­els of endo­the­lin-1, ­SACE and ESR ­were sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er (p<0.001) ­than ­those of ­healthy sub­jects. More­over, in ­patients ­with pul­mo­nary involve­ment, ­there was a sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal dif­fer­ence (p<0.001) ­between endo­the­lin-1 lev­els and radio­log­i­cal ­stage com­pared to nor­mal sub­jects. In the 9 ­patients ­with remis­sion of dis­ease, ­both endo­the­lin-1 lev­els and param­e­ters of activ­ity dis­ease nor­mal­ized.
Con­clu­sions. Our ­results ­seem to sug­gest ­that the ­increase of plas­ma endo­the­lin-1 lev­els in ­active sar­coi­do­sis can rep­re­sent an expres­sion of the endo­the­lial dys­func­tion and ­reflect the pic­ture of cel­lu­lar acti­va­tion.