Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Akdis, Mübeccel
• Verhagen, Johan
• Taylor, Alison
• Karamloo, Fariba
• Karagiannidis, Christian
• Crameri, Reto
• Thunberg, Sarah
• Deniz, Günnur
• Valenta, Rudolf
• Fiebig, Helmut
• Kegel, Christian
• Disch, Rainer
• Schmidt-Weber, Carsten B
• Blaser, Kurt
• Akdis, Cezmi A

Titel

Immune responses in healthy and allergic individuals are characterized by a fine balance between allergen-specific T regulatory 1 and T helper 2 cells

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of experimental medicine, 2004-06, Vol.199 (11), p.1567-1575

Ort / Verlag

United States: The Rockefeller University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The mechanisms by which immune responses to nonpathogenic environmental antigens lead to either allergy or nonharmful immunity are unknown. Single allergen-specific T cells constitute a very small fraction of the whole CD4+ T cell repertoire and can be isolated from the peripheral blood of humans according to their cytokine profile. Freshly purified interferon-gamma-, interleukin (IL)-4-, and IL-10-producing allergen-specific CD4+ T cells display characteristics of T helper cell (Th)1-, Th2-, and T regulatory (Tr)1-like cells, respectively. Tr1 cells consistently represent the dominant subset specific for common environmental allergens in healthy individuals; in contrast, there is a high frequency of allergen-specific IL-4-secreting T cells in allergic individuals. Tr1 cells use multiple suppressive mechanisms, IL-10 and TGF-beta as secreted cytokines, and cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 and programmed death 1 as surface molecules. Healthy and allergic individuals exhibit all three allergen-specific subsets in different proportions, indicating that a change in the dominant subset may lead to allergy development or recovery. Accordingly, blocking the suppressor activity of Tr1 cells or increasing Th2 cell frequency enhances allergen-specific Th2 cell activation ex vivo. These results indicate that the balance between allergen-specific Tr1 cells and Th2 cells may be decisive in the development of allergy.