Roxithromycin antibiotic induces outgrowth and differentiation in nasal mucociliary epithelia

Abstract

We evaluated the mechanism behind the efficacy of roxithromycin (RXM) in chronic infection to determine the influence of RXM on mucociliary epithelization by the outgrowth of mucociliary epithelial culture. We focused on the degree of epithelization by measuring the outgrowth of explant culture and on the degree of differentiation by counting the number of beating ciliary cells in the outgrowth epithelial sheet. The area of outgrowth cells with 1.0×10^-5mol/L and 10^-6mol/L of RXM was higher than that of controls, 10^-4mol/L and 10^-7mol/L of RXM. The number of ciliary cells with 1.0×10^-6mol/L of RXM was significantly higher than in other groups. Based on the above data, we concluded that nasal epithelial cells were sensitive to RXM in growth and differentiation but in some optimal concentration.