Eosinophils and the Pathophysiology of Asthma

Mechanism of Selective Eosinophil Recruitment into the Airways 87 

The histologic findings in asthma consist of massive epithelial shedding, hyperplasia of smooth muscle fibers, mucus glands and goblet cells, basement membrane thickening (Brewster etal., 1990), and eosinophil infiltra- 

Asthma is well known to be associated with an elevated eosinophil count (Horn et al., 1975 Adelroth et al.. 

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Elevated peripheral eosinophil counts in asthmatics have correlated with decreases in specific airway conductance, forced expiratory volume (FEVi), maximum mid-expiratory flow rate (Horn et al., 1975), bronchial hyperreactivity (BHR) to histamine (H Taylor and Luksza, 1987) and clinical severity scores (Aas Bousquet et al., 1990). When circulating eosinophils were isolated fi om asymptomatic asthmatics, a large proportion of cells (35%) was recovered with centrifugal density less than 1.082 gml compared to normal subjects (10% Frick et al., 1989). Alteration of centrifugal density of eosinophils is one of the phenotypic responses to cellular activation (Hansel et al., 1990 Fukuda and Makino, 1992). Not only is the number of cells increased in asthma, circulating eosinophils may be activated intravascularly as well. 

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Frigas E, Gleich GJ (1986) The eosinophil and the pathophysiology of asthma. J Allergy Clin Immunol 77(4) 527-537... 

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