Understanding Allergic Asthma from Allergen Inhalation Tests

The allergen challenge has evolved, in less than 150 years, from a crude tool used to document the etiology of allergen-induced disease to a well-controlled tool used today to investigate the pathophysiology and pharmacotherapy of asthma. Highlights of the authors’ involvement with the allergen chal...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Donald W Cockcroft, Fredrick E Hargreave, Paul M O’Byrne, Louis-Philippe Boulet
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2007-01-01
Series:Canadian Respiratory Journal
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2007/753450
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Summary:The allergen challenge has evolved, in less than 150 years, from a crude tool used to document the etiology of allergen-induced disease to a well-controlled tool used today to investigate the pathophysiology and pharmacotherapy of asthma. Highlights of the authors’ involvement with the allergen challenge include confirmation of the immunoglobulin E-dependence of the late asthmatic response, importance of (nonallergic) airway hyper-responsiveness as a determinant of the airway response to allergen, identification of allergen-induced increase in airway hyper-responsiveness, documentation of beta2-agonist-induced increase in airway response to allergen (including eosinophilic inflammation), advances in understanding the pathophysiology and kinetics of allergen-induced airway responses, and development of a muticentre clinical trial group devoted to using the allergen challenge for investigating promising new therapeutic strategies for asthma.
ISSN:1198-2241