ABSTRACT
The history of effective attempts to understand, treat, and manage asthma may be condensed into the past 40 years. By the mid-1960s asthma was recognized to have a significant allergic component even though the precise triggers of the disease were poorly characterized. IgE was described in 1967 reports by Ishizaka et al. (1) and Johansson and coworkers (2). Antecedent work had already demonstrated a role in the disease for basophil leukocytes (3). At the beginning of the 1980s short-term cell culture experiments incriminated specific mediators and the underlying involvement of the immune system. It was reasoned that when cell-bound IgE on basophils or tissue mast cells is crosslinked by an antigen, the cell degranulates, releasing preformed and newly synthesized mediators of immediate hypersensitivity such as histamine, leukotrienes, and platelet-activating factor. It was postulated that these pro-inflammatory chemicals identified in biological fluids might be responsible for the swelling, erythema and smooth muscle contraction characteristic of the asthmatic reaction.
