Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of lower respiratory tract disease in children. Children previously vaccinated with a formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine experienced enhanced morbidity and mortality upon natural RSV infection. Histological analysis revealed the presence of eosinophils in the pulmonary infiltrate of the vaccinated children. Eosinophils are characteristic of T...

Priming of circulating human eosinophils following late response to allergen challenge. D.J. Evans, M.A. Lindsay, B.J. O'Connor, P.J. Barnes. ©ERS Journals Ltd 1996. ABSTRACT: The eosinophil is recognized as an important effector cell in asthma. To investigate the role of eosinophils in the aetiology of asthma, we have examined whether peripheral blood eosinophils are primed following whole-lun...

Eosinophil cationic protein (ECP), a cytotoxic protein contained in eosinophils granules, can contribute to various inflammatory responses. Although Helicobacter pylori infection increases infiltration of eosinophils, the mechanisms of eosinophil degranulation by H. pylori infection are largely unknown. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of H. pylori outer membrane vesicles (OMV...

OBJECTIVE Obesity is a metabolic disorder that has reached epidemic proportions worldwide and leads to increased risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, certain cancers, and various other diseases. Obesity and its comorbidities are associated with impaired adipose tissue (AT) function. In the last decade, eosinophils have been identified as regulators of proper AT function. Our study...

As early as 1914 Schwarz (1) suspected an inverse relationship between adrenal activity and the level of circulating eosinophils. Twenty-five years later Dalton and Selye (2) noted eosinopenia following stress in animals and related it to release of adrenal cortical hormones. More recently Thorn and his associates (3, 4) observed a prompt decrease in circulating eosinophils in healthy persons, ...

Increasing evidence implicates the eosinophil as an important effector cell in asthma, but little is known regarding its regulation in vivo. Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) has been shown to regulate eosinophil function in vitro. We investigated the in vivo role of eosinophils and GM-CSF in mild asthma. We compared the number and function of eosinophils and the presenc...

Eosinophils are strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of asthma, particularly in damage to the airway epithelial lining. We examined the potential for lactoferrin, a multifunctional glycoprotein present in the airway surface liquid, to activate eosinophils. Incubating eosinophils in tissue culture wells pretreated with 1-100 microg/ml human lactoferrin stimulated concentration-dependent super...

BACKGROUND Eosinophils are involved in various inflammatory processes including allergic inflammation during which angiogenesis has been documented. Angiogenesis is most likely connected to the hypoxia which characterizes inflamed tissues. Eosinophils produce VEGF and are pro-angiogenic. However, to the best of our knowledge no study has been performed to verify the existence of a direct link b...

Corticosteroids are considered to be one of the most effective medicine for asthma by suppressing airway inflammation. This study was carried out to investigate the effects of prednisolone in the sputum of exacerbated asthmatics. Clinical severity, cell differentials, levels of interleukin (IL)-5, eosinophil cationic protein (ECP), EG2+ eosinophils, and nitric oxide (NO) metabolites were measur...

CD69 expression on eosinophils is observed in asthma and has been proposed as a marker of eosinophil activation. The role of allergens in the in vivo regulation of CD69 expression on eosinophils, however, remains incompletely understood. It was therefore investigated whether CD69 expression on eosinophils can be induced by allergen provocation in vivo. Ten allergic asthmatics were studied by se...