TABLE 2.

Spearman correlation matrix between soluble (s) tumour necrosis factor (TNF) marker levels in sputum supernatant and membrane-bound counterparts on sputum immune cells

	Sputum neutrophils	Sputum eosinophils	Sputum monocytes	Sputum macrophages
Sputum sTNF-α			p=0.705 r= −0.058	p=0.140 r=0.224
Sputum sTNFR1	p=0.705 r=0.058
Sputum sTNFR2	p=0.122 r=0.234	p=0.004 r=0.426	p=0.055 r=0.288	p=0.017 r=0.353

p-values and correlation coefficients (r) were derived from Spearman analyses. Significant p-values are highlighted in bold. TNFR: TNF receptor.