ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. NK and Innate Lymphoid Cell Biology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1555228
Serum 17□□-estradiol inversely correlates with circulating group 2 innate lymphoid cells in a cohort of asthmatic patients
Provisionally accepted
Elizabeth Myers1,2
Samuel E. Aamodt2Tom P. Huecksteadt2
Robert Paine1,2Mustafa Mir-Kasimov1,2
Christopher Reilly3Sean J. Callahan1,2Karl Sanders1,2
Kristi J. Warren1,2*- 1VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Veterans Health Administration, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
- 2The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States
- 3Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
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Asthma is a chronic airway inflammatory disorder that demonstrates a strong clinical bias in females of reproductive age. In this study we evaluated group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) that play a now welldefined role in allergy and asthma. ILC2 are rare immune cells that demonstrate a strong activation bias in females compared to males in both mice and humans. We hypothesized that ILC2 would be highly activated in people with asthma as compared to healthy, sex-matched controls. Subjects with asthma were identified by medical records searching and confirmed through pre-clinic interviews regarding asthma diagnosis. Additional demographic and clinical data were collected from study questionnaires or retrospective chart review. Correlations were determined between immune activation and hormone levels for each study participant regardless of healthy or asthma status. Results showed that within the asthma groups, female Veterans had higher circulating blood neutrophils compared to males, and males had higher eosinophils compared to females by complete blood cell count. ILC2 trended upwards in male Veterans with asthma compared to female Veterans with asthma (p = 0.086). Females with asthma had a marked reduction in CRTH2+ ILC2 in comparison to healthy female controls. The numbers of ILC2 in correlation to ovarian hormones were determined to show a significant inverse correlation with estrogen levels and ILC2 suggesting that estrogen may suppress ILC2 abundance in circulation. Additional studies are necessary to determine whether this estrogen-effect extends to the lung and airways of people with asthma.
Keywords: Asthma, estrogen, Progesterone, Neutrophils, Eosinophils
Received: 03 Jan 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Myers, Aamodt, Huecksteadt, Paine, Mir-Kasimov, Reilly, Callahan, Sanders and Warren. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kristi J. Warren, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.