This piece of news may provide information about allergic response in people. A study of human cells has apparently singled out a molecule that may particularly guide the immune cells to increase the ability to generate an allergic reaction.
The signaling molecule known as thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is claimed to be quite vital to the growth of allergic diseases like asthma, atopic dermatitis (eczema), and food allergy. The study team supposedly concentrated on dendritic cells, immune cells that appear to kick off the main immune response. When dendritic cells are said be in contact with other immune cells called T cells, this causes them to grow into diverse subsets of T cells, counting helper 1 (Th1) and helper 2 (Th2) cells. These T-cell subsets are believed to be caught up in shielding immune responses, but the Th2 cells may also force an allergic response. So far, apparently it was not acknowledged as to how dendritic cells provoked T cells to turn into Th2 cells.
The study team, headed by Yong-Jun Liu, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, applied dendritic cells to be cut off from the blood of fit donors. They apparently discovered that the fastening of TSLP to these cells may generate a different team of signaling pathways inside the cells. Consequently, the dendritic cells appear to generate messenger molecules that perform on the T cells, thereby causing them to become Th2 cells.
The study seems to detect TSLP as a knob that causes the growth of the allergic response in people and proposes that this molecule could be a possible beneficial objective to treat and avert allergic diseases.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health supported Dr. Liu and his colleagues in this study.