Objective and design: The induction of sputum is a safe, noninvasive method of studying airway inflammation in asthma, but the method of analyzing the samples is laborious and requires well-trained technicians using highly specialized laboratory equipment. We introduce a shorter and simpler modification of the process for identifying eosinophilic inflammation from induced sputum (IS) samples.
Material: Samples of 81 patients referred for IS assessment of respiratory diseases were studied. Four different assessment approaches were studied in comparison with the conventional method of selecting plugs proposed by the European Respiratory Society/American Thoracic Society task force.
Results: One modification of the conventional method of IS processing emerged as simpler to execute and less technologically demanding than the original one (13.0 ± 18.2 vs. 15.4 ± 22.4% eosinophils, P = 0.19).
Conclusion: The simpler approach should now encourage the use of IS as a convenient procedure for evaluating eosinophilic inflammation in less sophisticated laboratories.