[Serum rheumatoid factor and peripheral blood eosinophil counts in patients with bronchial asthma]

These days some reports say that bronchial asthma, especially severe asthma, is systemic inflammatory and its severity correlates with eosinophil counts. Some patients with asthma have positive tests for rheumatoid factor (RF) which is detected in systemic hyper immunoreactive desease such as rheumatoid arthritis. So we investigated each of these factors in asthmatic patients. We randomly selected 100 asthmatics from regular outpatients of our hospital. In a positive RF level group (over 21 IU/ml), Eosinophil counts were significantly higher than those in a negative RF level group. RF levels were significantly and positively correlated with the logarithm of eosinophil count. And in severe groups (patients with severe asthma, treated with high dose inhaled steroids, and with history of systemic steroids use for the last one month), RF levels were significantly higher than those in other groups. Our result suggested that RF levels reflect eosinophilia and asthma severity.