The response to injury usually begins with dilatation of small blood vessels in and around the injured site (figure bellow). This response (called vasodilatation) results from relaxation of smooth muscle in the vascular walls. It can begin within seconds after an acute injury or develop over hours or days of low-grade irritation or infection. Vasodilatation initially results in increased blood flow through arterioles, capillaries, and venules of the affected region, leading to redness (erythema) and warmth. As the vessels dilate, endothelial cells lining some of the vessels actively retract away from one another to create temporary, microscopic gaps in the endothelial lining. Endothelial retraction occurs only in the smallest venules (often called postcapillary venules), which are thin-walled vessels with lumenal diameters of 20 - 60 µm. (more…)
Some of the immediate sequelae of injury are uncomfortably familiar: Soon after an injury occurs, the affected site and its sur ...
Acute inflammatory response constitute the first line of defense against infection pathogenesis and how immune system works as ...
Once it is tethered onto the venule wall, the neutrophil or other leukocyte comes into contact with a wide variety of inflammatory ...
Neutrophils make up an army of more-or-less identical circulating phagocytes that are poised to respond quickly and in vast numbers ...
The airway circulation has many potential roles in asthma. The vasculature has a major influence on upper airway patency in nasal i ...
AP-1 is an inducible transcription factor that binds to promoter or enhancer regions of many cytokine genes, often in close association with the nuclear factor of activated T cells (NF-AT). AP-1 is composed of c-fos and c-jun or c-jun/c-jun homodimers. AP-1 binding has been demonstrated as obligatory for NF-AT-mediated cytokine gene acti- vation in many cases. The signal transduction pathway responsible for AP-1 activation involves jun and p38 kinase-activated protein kinase). (more…)
The overlapping functions of cytokines largely reflect the properties of the cell surface receptors to which they bind. All cyt ...
Perhaps the most exciting recent advance in the cytokine signaling field has been the elucidation of the Jak/Stat pathway. The ...
The Ras-dependent pathway can be triggered by a variety of cytokine receptors, as well as by certain adhesion molecules and by ...
The T-bet (T-box 21) gene (TBX21) encodes a transcription factor, T-box expressed in T cells, which has been implicated in asthma t ...
A previous genome-wide screen for mite-sensitive atopic dermatitis asthma in Japanese families indicated linkage to chromosome 5q33 ...
Airway hyper-responsiveness in asthma may involve smooth muscle growth, a manifestation of airway remodelling. The involvement of inflammatory cells in the induction of airway smooth muscle growth was studied in vivo and ex vivo in a brown Norway rat model of asthma. Transfer of CD4 + T lymphocytes from ovalbuminsensitized animals induced an increase in airway smooth muscle mass in naive animals upon repeated ovalbumin challenge. Ex vivo, coculture of antigen-stimulated CD4 + T cells and airway smooth muscle cells led to myocyte proliferation and prolonged T-cell survival. (more…)
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF), originally described as a vascular permeability factor generating tissue oedema, has be ...
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) act as receptors for numerous stimuli of immune cells, including bacterial cell wall constituents (l ...
A role for Leukotriene B4 in the induction of airway hyper-responsiveness was explored through the use of transgenic mice defic ...
IgE plays an important role in allergic asthma. Reducing IgE in the airway mucosa should reduce airway inflammation. Omalizumab has ...
Eosinophil infiltration of the mucosa is a feature of asthmatic airways. Their adhesion to bronchial epithelial cells has been ...
The precise mechanisms underlying the effects of Specific Immunotherapy are not well understood but several studies have shown that Specific Immunotherapy T inhibits both early and late immune responses to allergen exposure.
Recently, there have been many studies aimed at elucidating the mechanisms by which allergen-specific immunotherapy works. (more…)
The immunologic mechanisms of sublingual immunotherapy are less established. In Cochrane analysis, the authors concluded that t ...
Histamine is a low-molecular-weight monoamine that binds to four different G-protein-coupled receptors, and has recently been d ...
Allergen-specific immunotherapy aims to correct the underlying immune imbalance associated with specific immunotherapy allergic rhi ...
Allergen-specific immunotherapy is highly effective in the treatment of IgE-mediated allergy diseases such as rhinitis, conjunc ...
The specific treatment of allergy has previously relied upon allergen avoidance and sublingual immunotherapy. These approaches have ...