Effects of asthma on cell components in peripheral blood among smokers and non-smokers

Eosinophils play a central role in asthma, but the interplay of the effects of smoking, eosinophils and asthma remains unclear.

The primary objective of our study was to investigate the extent to which smoking modifies the effect of asthma on circulating eosinophils, CD4+ and CD8+ T cell counts.

Data were collected semiannually between 1987 and 1994 from HIV-negative participants in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study. Asthma was defined by a questionnaire at baseline as a self-report of diagnosed asthma. A total of 1420 blood samples from 197 asthmatics and 15 822 from 1997 non-asthmatics were collected.

Eosinophil levels were higher in asthmatics (28% of asthmatics had eosinophils >/=4% and 16% of non-asthmatics) regardless of smoking history, but smoking modified the association between eosinophils and asthma. Namely, the odds ratios for eosinophils being >/=4% in asthmatics to non-asthmatics decreased from 2.7 (95% CI: 2.0, 3.6) in never, to 2.1 (1.4, 3.1) in former, and to 1.5 (0.9, 2.3) in current smokers. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses coherently showed that smoking increased eosinophils in non-asthmatics, but the converse was true for asthmatics. In contrast, no differences in peripheral blood T cell counts between asthmatics and non-asthmatics were observed.

Under the established link between increased eosinophils and asthma, these data indicate that smoking modified this relationship. This finding suggests that smoking plays a different immunological role in asthmatics and non-asthmatics.