© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Thoracic Society
EDITORIAL
Regulatory T cells and asthma and allergy
Regulation: the art of control? Regulatory T cells and asthma and allergy
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr D S Robinson
Leukocyte Biology Section, Biomedical Sciences Division, Faculty of Medicine, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK; d.s.robinson@imperial.ac.uk
A better understanding of the immunology of regulation may allow preventive or disease modifying treatment for asthma and other respiratory diseases
Keywords: asthma; allergy; immunotherapy; T cells
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Much is currently made of the control of asthma in therapeutic guidelines. Both the British guidelines and the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) define measures of control of the disease, and recent studies have defined strategies for control using available anti-inflammatory and bronchodilator therapy such as inhaled steroids and long acting ß2 agonists.1,2 However, currently available treatments suppress inflammation but do not modify the underlying immunological predisposition to the disease.
Asthma is widely recognised as an inflammatory airway disease driven by activation of Th2-type T lymphocytes in both atopic allergic and intrinsic or non-allergic forms.3–5 Recent advances in our understanding of the control of the immunological process have identified regulatory suppressive T cells which can prevent activation of self-reactive or pathological T cells in autoimmune or infectious disease models.6–8 Does this understanding of immune regulation hold the prospect of disease control or even
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