The immune balance controlled by T helper 1 (Th1) and T helper 2 (Th2) is crucial for immunoregulation and its imbalance causes various immune diseases including allergic asthma. Therefore, diagnosis of Th1/Th2 balance in autoimmune diseases including asthma is essential for the application of immune balance regulating drugs. Th1/Th2 balance is not only controlled by Th1 cells and Th2 cells, bu...

TH2-biased immune responses are associated with inadequate protection against some pathogens and with cancer, colitis, asthma and allergy. Since most currently used vaccine adjuvants induce a TH2-biased response, this has led to interest in developing adjuvants capable of activating TH1 immunity and modulating existing TH2 responses. Immunotherapies to shift immune responses from TH2 to TH1 hav...

Two T helper (Th) cell subsets, namely Th1 and Th2 cells, play an important role in inflammatory diseases. The two subsets are thought to counter-regulate each other, and alterations in their balance result in different diseases. This paradigm has been challenged by recent clinical and experimental data. Because of the large number of genes involved in regulating Th1 and Th2 cells, assessment o...

IL-12 plays a central role in both the induction and magnitude of a primary Th1 response. A critical question in designing vaccines for diseases requiring Th1 immunity such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Leishmania major is the requirements to sustain memory/effector Th1 cells in vivo. This report examines the role of IL-12 and antigen in sustaining Th1 responses sufficient for protective im...

Interleukin (IL)-18 was originally regarded to induce T helper cell (Th)1-related cytokines. In general, factors favoring interferon (IFN)-gamma production are believed to abolish allergic diseases. Thus, we tested the role of IL-18 in regulation of bronchial asthma. To avoid a background response of host-derived T cells, we administered memory type Th1 or Th2 cells into unsensitized mice and e...

Proinflammatory T helper 1 (Th1) cells express high levels of carbohydrate ligands for the endothelial selectins, but the molecular basis for this phenotype is incompletely understood. We document here a significant role in selectin ligand formation for the recently described Th1 transcription factor T-bet. Th1 cells generated from T-bet-/- mice showed significantly lower levels of ligands for ...

Acquired aplastic anemia (AA) is a potentially fatal bone marrow (BM) failure syndrome. IFN-γ-producing Th1 CD4(+) T cells mediate the immune destruction of hematopoietic cells, and they are central to the pathogenesis. However, the molecular events that control the development of BM-destructive Th1 cells remain largely unknown. Ezh2 is a chromatin-modifying enzyme that regulates multiple cellu...

Estrogens foster immunological processes driven by CD4+ Th2 cells and B cells and androgens foster Th1 CD4+ and CD8+ cell activity. Higher levels of IFN-gamma and IL-2 and lower levels of IL-4 and IL-10 are detected in the phytohemagglutinin-stimulated lymphocyte culture supernatants of men compared with women. It is documented that the physiologic levels of estrogens produced during the luteal...

Previous studies have demonstrated that the combination of the T helper cell 1 (Th1)-derived cytokines interleukin (IL)-2 and interferon (IFN)-gamma induces nitric oxide (NO) production and tumor cytolysis by mouse peritoneal macrophages and the mouse macrophage cell line ANA-1 in vitro. Conversely, the Th2-derived cytokine IL-4 inhibits IL-2 and IFN-gamma-induced NO production and tumor cytoly...

One mechanism regulating the ability of different subsets of T helper (Th) cells to respond to cytokines is the differential expression of cytokine receptors. For example, Th2 cells express both chains of the interferon gamma receptor (IFN-gammaR), whereas Th1 cells do not express the second chain of the IFN-gammaR (IFN-gammaR2) and are therefore unresponsive to IFN-gamma. To determine whether ...