الفهرس 
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Abstract
A
sthma is one of the most common chronic conditions affecting both children and adults. It is considered a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways in which many cells and cellular elements play a role. This chronic inflammation causes an associated increase in airway hyper-responsiveness that leads to recurrent episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and cough.
Serum levels of high sensitivity CRP are associated with asthma, but the relationship between higher levels of serum hs-CRP and the degree of asthma severity, types of asthma and their relation to the immune response in asthma remains unclear.
Our study was to evaluate the role of serum hs-CRP as a systemic inflammatory marker in asthmatic patients in correlations with other immunological workers (TNF-α (Th1) and IL-4 (Th2) cytokines) in the pathogenesis of bronchial asthma, also to detect its relationship to the type of immune response of asthma (allergic or non allergic).
The study included 80 subjects aged 18-75 years. The subjects were divided into two main groups, group I (Case group) included 60 asthmatic patients. This group was divided into two subgroups; group IA (Allergic) included 30 patients with allergic type of asthma group IB (Non-allergic) included 30 patients with non-allergic type of asthma and group II (Control group) included 20 healthy subjects.
All subjects were subjected to pulmonary function test, skin prick test and serum measurement of hs-CRP, TNF-α, IL-4 and total IgE. While specific IgE level was done only for selected allergic cases.
Our study showed the following results
Hs-CRP was significantly higher in all cases and both allergic and non-allergic groups than control group, while allergic and non-allergic groups were not significantly different from each other.
TNF-α level is significantly higher in all cases and both allergic and non-allergic groups than control group, and it was significantly higher in non allergic group than the allergic one.
IL4 level was significantly higher in all cases and both allergic and non-allergic groups than control group, and allergic group was significantly higher than non-allergic group.
Total IgE was significantly higher in cases (both allergic and non-allergic) than control group, and allergic group was significantly higher than non-allergic group.
There was a negative correlation between FEV1% and high sensitivity CRP in cases (allergic and non-allergic), but this was statistically significant only with cases as a whole.
There was a significant positive correlation between severity of bronchial asthma and high sensitivity CRP in all cases, and non- significant positive correlation with each allergic and non-allergic groups.
As regards correlation between immunological data and high sensitivity CRP in all cases; we noticed that only IL4 had a significant correlation with IgE. In non-allergic group; TNF-α had a significant correlation with high sensitivity CRP and IL4. In allergic group different immunological parameters had no significant correlation with each other.