ABSTRACT
Although conceivably this may be a factor in very young children with no lower airway bacterial infection (and no study has evaluated this), it seems unlikely to be important in older children and adults with established neutrophilic airway inflammation. Repetitive induction of sputum with hypertonic saline has been reported to cause increased airway neutrophilia,28,29 which is intrinsically undesirable in CF; however, in the large hypertonic saline study reported above,22 hypertonic saline did not result in any short-or long-term increase in sputum interleukin (IL)-8, myeloperoxidase or neutrophil elastase, and no change in sputum culture results. Furthermore, there were no correlations between changes in lung function and changes in inflammatory markers.30 This suggests that there is no clinically significant proinflammatory effect of hypertonic saline over at least a 12-week period.
