Elsevier

Respiratory Medicine

Volume 105, Issue 12, December 2011, Pages 1931-1938
Respiratory Medicine

Small airway disease associated with Sjögren’s syndrome: Clinico-pathological correlations

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmed.2011.08.009Get rights and content
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Summary

Background

Relationships among clinical, physiological, imaging and pathological findings of small airway disease associated with Sjögren’s syndrome have remained unclear.

Subjects and methods: We retrospectively studied 14 patients who underwent surgical lung biopsy and who were diagnosed with small airway disease associated with primary or secondary Sjögren’s syndrome. We compared clinical, bronchoalveolar lavage, physiological, imaging and pathological findings between primary and secondary Sjögren’s syndrome. We scored HRCT and pathological abnormalities and investigated correlations among physiological, HRCT and pathological data, changes in physiological parameters and in HRCT scores after two years of treatment, as well as correlations between these values and pathological scores.

Results

Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, physiological, imaging and pathological findings of the airways did not significantly differ between primary and secondary Sjögren’s syndrome. Air trapping on HRCT negatively correlated with MEF50 and MEF25. Although lymphoid cell infiltration and peribronchiolar fibrosis were the most common pathologies, constrictive change scores correlated negatively with MEF50 and MEF25, positively with air trapping scores and negatively with improvements after therapy in MEF50, MEF25 and air trapping.

Conclusions

Constrictive change was the most significant determinant of physiological and imaging presentations and of changes in these factors after therapy for small airway disease associated with Sjögren’s syndrome.

Keywords

Connective tissue disorders
Bronchiolitis
Pulmonary function
Autoimmune exocrinopathy
Rheumatoid arthritis

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