Document Type
Review
Publication Date
3-12-2009
Description
Dysregulated immune response results in inflammatory symptoms in the respiratory mucosa leading to asthma and allergy in susceptible individuals. The T helper type 2 (Th2) subsets are primarily involved in this disease process. Nevertheless, there is growing evidence in support of T cells with regulatory potential that operates in non-allergic individuals. These regulatory T cells occur naturally are called natural T regulatory cells (nTregs) and express the transcription factor Foxp3. They are selected in the thymus and move to the periphery. The CD4 Th cells in the periphery can be induced to become regulatory T cells and hence called induced or adaptive T regulatory cells. These cells can make IL-10 or TGF-b or both, by which they attain most of their suppressive activity. This review gives an overview of the regulatory T cells, their role in allergic diseases and explores possible interventionist approaches to manipulate Tregs for achieving therapeutic goals.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Citation Information
Nandakumar, Subhadra; Miller, Christopher W.T.; and Kumaraguru, Uday. 2009. T Regulatory Cells: An Overview and Intervention Techniques to Modulate Allergy Outcome. Clinical and Molecular Allergy. Vol.7 https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-7961-7-5
Copyright Statement
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.