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New perspectives in asthma treatment.
No full textThe recent advances in the knowledge of the basic mechanisms underlying asthmatic inflammation have significantly contributed to the delineation of new therapeutic perspectives for asthma. There are currently three main approaches to the development of novel antiasthma treatments:
1) improvement in existing classes of drugs
2) identification of new compounds able to interfere with the complex network of proinflammatory mediators, cytokines, chemokines, and adhesion molecules involved in the pathogenesis of asthma
3) utilization of new forms of immunotherapy aimed at blocking the unbalanced Th2 response which characterizes the pathophysiology of asthma.
Such a remarkable expansion in available therapeutic options will probably allow us, over the next decade, to treat asthma by more selectively targeting the pathogenetic events responsible for this widespread airway disease
[Contribution of the study of respiratory function to the evaluation of pulmonary interstitiopathies].
No full textTRANSGLUTAMINASE IN ALVEOLAR MACROPHAGES FROM NORMAL AND ASTHMATIC SUBJECTS
No full textTransglutaminase (TGase), a calcium-dependent enzyme, is involved in the regulation of cell growth and differentiation. Studies from several laborato¬ries have indicated that TGase may play an important role in macrophage function. Activation of macrophages in-vivo is associated with marked increases in TGase activity. Indeed, many reports have suggested that in¬flammatory macrophages have higher levels of TGase activity than resident, non-activated macrophages. We have undertaken a combined immuno¬chemical and enzymological approach both to evaluate the TGase levels in alveolar macrophages from normal subjects and from asthmatic patients, and to investigate the mechanism that may account for the elevation that we have found in macrophages from patients with asthma. We have shown that the elevated enzyme activity in macrophages from asthmatic subjects, if com¬pared with normal individuals (35±7 vs 9±1 TGase activity; pmols/min/mg), is due to a marked accumulation of TGase into the cells, and that this reduc¬tion can be stimulated by exposure, in vitro, of alveolar macrophages to activating factors
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