In vivo bronchial epithelial interferon responses are augmented in asthma on day 4 following experimental rhinovirus infection.

Despite good evidence of impaired innate antiviral responses in asthma, trials of inhaled interferon-β given during exacerbations showed only modest benefits in moderate/severe asthma. Using human experimental rhinovirus infection, we observe robust in vivo induction of bronchial epithelial interferon response genes 4 days after virus inoculation in 25 subjects with asthma but not 11 control subjects. This signature correlated with virus loads and lower respiratory symptoms. Our data indicate that the in vivo innate antiviral response is dysregulated in asthma and open up the potential that prophylactic rather than therapeutic interferon therapy may have greater clinical benefit.

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Competing interests: HF and LL report no competing interests. DJJ reports personal fees from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis outside the submitted work. MR and AnS report personal fees from AstraZeneca outside the submitted work. AC reports personal fees from Novartis, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Philips, Sanofi, Stallergenes Greer, and AstraZeneca outside the submitted work. SJ, PAW and RW are GlaxoSmithKline employees. MRE is a Virtus Respiratory Research employee. SLJ personal fees from Virtus Respiratory Research, Myelo Therapeutics, Bayer, Synairgen, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi, Gerson Lehrman Group, resTORbio, Bioforce, Materia Medical Holdings, PrepBio Pharma, Pulmotect, Virion Health, Lallemand Pharma, and AstraZeneca outside the submitted work; in addition SLJ is an author on patents relating to use of interferons in treatment of exacerbations of airway disease.