Eosinophilic bronchiectasis increases length and cost of hospitalization: a retrospective analysis in a hospital of southern China from 2012 to 2020

Bronchiectasis is a heterogeneous chronic pulmonary disease, characterized by irreversibly dilated airways and thickening bronchial walls but various etiologies and clinical symptoms [1‐3]. Although scholars traditionally believed that activated neutrophils are essential in pathogenesis of bronchiectasis and neutrophilic inflammation could predict exacerbations and prognosis, the concept of eosinophilic bronchiectasis has been proposed recently and the clinical significance of blood eosinophil count (BEC) in bronchiectasis is being increasingly realized [4‐7].

Previous studies have demonstrated that eosinophilic subtype in bronchiectasis exhibits different clinical traits [8, 9]. Bronchiectasis patients with high blood eosinophil cells are relevant to Streptococcus- and Pseudomonas-dominated microbiome profiles, and they are susceptible to exacerbate even though controlling the confounding effects of infection [10]. However, few research studies on clinical significance of BEC and its association with length and cost of hospitalization in acute bronchiectasis exacerbations.

In this study, we analyzed the proportion of high BEC in bronchiectasis patients in a hospital of southern China, and then compared clinical characteristic, length of hospital stay, hospitalization cost and inflammatory markers between eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic bronchiectasis to explore the clinical effect and mechanism of high BEC on exacerbation of bronchiectasis.

Bronchiectasis has for a long time been regarded as excessive neutrophilic airway inflammation [4, 5, 13]. Until recently, the concept of eosinophilic bronchiectasis has attracted the attention of pulmonary specialists [10, 14], but it is rarely known about the clinical characteristics and disease burden of eosinophilic exacerbation bronchiectasis. Here, we innovatively reported that 11.7% bronchiectasis patients’ blood eosinophil cells were more than 300 cells/μL in southern China and showed that eosinophilic bronchiectasis patients had longer length of hospital stay and more hospitalization cost compared to those in non-eosinophilic bronchiectasis group, which might be due to the stronger inflammatory reaction. We assessed the effect attributable to high eosinophil cells with PSM analysis, and thereby minimizing the number of confounding variables and enhancing the validity of our results.

It is easily accessible to use blood eosinophil cell as a modest biomarker of airway inflammatory diseases, which is closely relevant to bronchial and/or lung eosinophilia. An European multi-cohort study had discovered that 18% ~ 29.5% of bronchiectasis patients showed a predominant eosinophilic airway inflammation by analyzing BEC [10], while in this southern China study, eosinophilic subtype was less common, accounting for 11.7% of bronchiectasis participants, similar to another retrospective report from Beijing, China which reported the prevalence of 17.6% [15]. The cause for the lower incidence rate might be consistent with lower incidence of allergic disease in China [16, 17]. We also found that the most common comorbidity disease was cardiovascular disease, which was in line with a previous study [18].

As for clinical characteristics, previous studies have reported conflicting findings. One observational study showed that bronchiectasis patients with high eosinophil counts (≥ 100cells/μL) exhibit a mild disease with better clinical outcomes, lung function parameters and nutritional status [19]. However, another study reported opposite results that bronchiectasis patients with a T2-high endotype (defined by either BEC ≥ 300cells/μL or FeNO ≥ 25bpp) exhibit a more severe disease with high dyspnea score, low lung function and worse quality of life [7]. The conflicting results in these findings were largely attributed to heterogeneity of bronchiectasis and complex comorbidities. PSM analysis was particularly useful for retrospective clinical trials to erase differences in baseline covariates between groups [20]. Our study controlled for the baseline factors including age, sex and comorbidities to evaluate the effect of eosinophil cells alone on the clinical outcomes and medical burden of bronchiectasis. Our results showed that no difference existed in clinical characteristics including BMI, smoking history, FEV1% predicted, FEV1/FVC ratio, dyspnea score, radiological severity and FACED score between the two groups, expect for higher FVC% predicted, which was in accordance with a multiple international cohorts study presenting that there is no significant differences exist in age, BMI, symptoms and FEV1 at baseline characteristics between eosinophilic bronchiectasis (defined by BEC ≥ 300cells/μL) and non-eosinophilic bronchiectasis after controlling for the confounding effects of infection [10].

The economic burden of acute exacerbation of bronchiectasis has been reported in a few of studies. The cost of one episode of bronchiectasis exacerbation was reported to be USD 7,827 in the United States [21] and EUR 5,284 in Spain [22], and patients with older age, more comorbidities, lower FEV1, chronic bronchial infection due to P. aeruginosa, and an association with COPD tended to be associated with higher healthcare costs [23]. Here, we firstly evaluated the economic cost of acute exacerbation of eosinophilic bronchiectasis in China and found that the median cost was RMB 15,011 for eosinophilic bronchiectasis, over 1.5 times as much as that with non-eosinophilic bronchiectasis (RMB 9,109). Moreover, the estimated medical cost of the matched EOS group may have been inadvertently underestimated due to inflation, particularly when the proportion of cases within the past 3 years was relatively smaller, suggesting that the Eos group would cause greater medical burden. Most of the total expenditure corresponds to longer hospital stay and higher medicine fee, especially antibiotics fee. This result was consistent with previous findings in other chronic airway disease such as asthma-COPD overlop, severe asthma and COPD, in which eosinophilic patients used more respiratory medications [24].

After adjusting for confounders, high eosinophil count remained a significant adverse factor on LOS in bronchiectasis, contrary to that the LOS was significantly shorter in COPD patients experiencing an eosinophilic exacerbation [25]. It is speculated that a rapid response to steroid treatment result in the shorter LOS in eosinophilic COPD. However, since the concept of eosinophilic bronchiectasis had been proposed until recently, corticosteroids have not been routinely recommended in clinical practice, which possibly prolong the length of hospital stay for eosinophilic bronchiectasis. Further prospective studies of the effects of inhaled and systemic corticosteroids on eosinophilic bronchiectasis exacerbation should be performed to better understand the clinical benefits. Moreover, we found that PLT but not CRP was related to longer hospital stay, in accordance with report from EMBARC registry [26] that thrombocytosis, but not CRP was associated with greater disease severity and increased hospitalization at 1 year. However, we did not find any association between P. aeruginosa and hospital length of stay. It should be noted that most of the microbiological information in this study was obtained through traditional sputum culture instead of 16S or next generation sequencing (NGS), so the detection rate was relatively low, which limited the results of clinical analysis.

For comprehending the underlying mechanism for poorer clinical outcome in eosinophilic bronchiectasis, inflammatory mediators were evaluated in this study. Elevated levels of WBC and CRP have been previously proven to be associated with increased risk of major comorbidities in COPD [27]. Increasing evidence also showed that PLT and CRP be associated with disease severity, exacerbations and worse clinical outcomes in bronchiectasis [26]. In our cohort, eosinophilic bronchiectasis presented with increased level of WBC, lymphocyte count, PLT, and C-reactive protein (CRP) and the number of PLT was positively associated with the level of BEC, suggesting the presence of elevated inflammation in eosinophilic subtype. Thus, these results suggested that the activated eosinophil cells released pro-inflammatory mediators resulting in sustained tissue inflammation and damage, which may be evolved in the mechanism underlying poorer clinical outcome in patients with eosinophilic bronchiectasis.

There are some limitations in our study. Firstly, we used the retrospective data from a single hospital and therefore inevitable biases exist, which should be verified in prospective multi-center clinical trials. Secondly, due to the large time-span of reviewed cases, the treatments involving corticosteroids and antibiotics could only be extracted from database, which lead to instances of missing data. Thirdly, definition of eosinophilic bronchiectasis based on a single measurement of eosinophil count during exacerbation of bronchiectasis was limited. Fourthly, the acute exacerbation and mortality were not followed up after the discharge to evaluate the long-term outcome. Despite these limitations, this study indeed adds evidence to support eosinophilic bronchiectasis as a specific phenotype driving increased disease burden and thus more attention in corticosterios treatment during exacerbation is needed.

In general, Our data firstly uncovered that eosinophilic bronchiectasis patients displayed more hospitalization cost, longer LOS and stronger inflammatory response. By describing the above clinical characteristics of eosinophilic bronchiectasis, this study helps to provide more evidence in eosinophil targeted therapy in bronchiectasis. There is a need to further confirm our results and explore the mechanism underlying the eosinophilic inflammation and the consequent potential treatment.