Serum Caspase-3 Activity in Tuberculosis Patients / 现代检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore serum caspase-3 activity in pulmonary tuberculosis patients.Methods 38 tuberculosis pa-tients in Infectious Disease Department in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University were recruited and the peripheral venous blood was collected in December,2010.Among them,sputum smear-positive patients which were first treated were 13,sputum smear-negative patients which were first treated were 15,10 cases were drug resistance.In addition, 22 unrelated healthy individuals from a routine health survey were enrolled as controls.Spectrophotometry was used to de-tect serum caspase-3 activity in tuberculosis patients,which was absorbancy-A of 4-nitroaniline generated by caspase-3.Re-sults The activity of caspase-3 in sputum smear-positive patients,sputum smear-negative patients,drug resistance patients, and healthy controls were 37.15±5.06,50.38±6.29,45.32±3.32 and 23.89±2.29,respectively.The caspase-3 activity was significantly different from each other (F=10.68,P0.05).In the same way,there was no significant difference in male/female ratio[χ2=0.38 (DL=3),P=0.94]and mean age (F=0.82,P=0.49)among the four group.Conclusion Caspase-3 closely associated with the development of tuberculosis occurrence, which might promote apoptosis of cells through the activation of caspase-3 and produce the body immune process of tubercu-losis.