• TNFα assay • SP-A assay • IL1 assay These assays will be performed using specific ELISA/ EIA kits already used to analyse BALF. These methods have been proven to do not cross-react with other cytokines and with sPLA2; in previous studies, coefficients of variation of the standard curve resulted always ≤ 9% [15, 39, [60] [61] [62] .