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Updated: Mar 17, 2026

Bronchoalveolar Lavage of Murine Lungs to Analyze Inflammatory Cell Infiltration
Published on: May 4, 2017
Diagnostic Performance of Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid CD4/CD8 Ratio for Sarcoidosis: A Meta-analysis
Yongchun Shen1, Caishuang Pang1, Yanqiu Wu1
1Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, West China Hospital of Sichuan University and Division of Pulmonary Diseases, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy of China, Chengdu 610041, China.
Background:
The usefulness of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) CD4/CD8 ratio for diagnosing sarcoidosis has been reported in many studies with variable results. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to estimate the overall diagnostic accuracy of BALF CD4/CD8 ratio based on the bulk of published evidence.
Methods:
Studies published prior to June 2015 and indexed in PubMed, OVID, Web of Science, Scopus and other databases were evaluated for inclusion. Data on sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were pooled from included studies. Summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves were used to summarize overall test performance. Deeks's funnel plot was used to detect publication bias.
Results:
Sixteen publications with 1885 subjects met our inclusion criteria and were included in this meta-analysis. Summary estimates of the diagnostic performance of the BALF CD4/CD8 ratio were as follows: sensitivity, 0.70 (95%CI 0.64-0.75); specificity, 0.83 (95%CI 0.78-0.86); PLR, 4.04 (95%CI 3.13-5.20); NLR, 0.36 (95%CI 0.30-0.44); and DOR, 11.17 (95%CI 7.31-17.07). The area under the SROC curve was 0.84 (95%CI 0.81-0.87). There was no evidence of publication bias.
Conclusion:
Measuring the BALF CD4/CD8 ratio may assist in the diagnosis of sarcoidosis when interpreted in parallel with other diagnostic factors.

