RESolutie van Ontsteking in de Luchtwegen na Virale Expositie.

To investigate whether allergic asthmatics have an impaired capability to resolve inflammatory cells after viral airway infection, we will expose healthy individuals and allergic asthmatics to rhinovirus type 16. Volunteers will undergo two bronchoscopies to collect material before and after infection. In addition, lung function testing and asthma and common cold questionnaires will be included.

We hypothesize that allergic asthmatics are less capable in resolving inflammatory cells after viral airway infection as a consequences of impaired expression of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase.

1. 2 days prior to infection;

2. 4 days after infection (lung function testing only);

3. 6 days after infection.

Healthy volunteers and allergic asthma patients will be infected by rhinovirus-type 16 (10 TCID50) by spraying the virus into the nasal cavity, leading to mild common cold symptoms. In general, these symptoms will be more pronounced for allergic astmatics and will be scored daily by the volunteers (through a modified asthma control questionnaire (ACQ) and a common cold questionnaire (CCQ)). We expect that the increased symptoms scores in asthmatics is associated with enhanced inflammation of the airways. We will therefore include several inflammatory markers in our study. We used cytokine levels in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid to calculate the power of the study. In this study we are trying to correlate symptoms, inflammation, viral load and relevant biomarkers of IDO-mediated tryptophan degradation in blood and lavage fluid. We will also include non-invasive techniques to measure these end-points through NO measurements and exhaled breath condensate.