LUNG ALERT
Invariant natural killer T cells in asthma and COPD: back to square one!
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center at Harlem Hospital, New York, NY, USA; san14@columbia.edu
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Vijayanand P, Seumois G, Pickard C, et al. Invariant natural killer T cells in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. N Engl J Med 2007;356:1410–22.
Recent studies have suggested the possibility of invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) playing an important role in the pathogenesis of asthma. To explore this hypothesis, the authors measured the numbers of iNKT in the airways of patients with stable mild/moderate asthma, patients with stable or exacerbated chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and controls.
Cells from induced sputum, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) and/or bronchial biopsies were labelled with fluorescent monoclonal antibodies for CD3, CD4 and iNKT specific domains: V
24, Vß11, V24-J18 and CD1d tetramers loaded with galactosylceramide. Flow cytometry with serial gating was used for phenotyping and excluded cells other than iNKT—the failure to do so may have been a drawback of a previous study. Quantitative polymerase
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
