Immune System 'Killer' T-Cells May Not Be Key to Asthma

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However, research published last year suggested that rather than the helper T-cells, it was actually killer T-cells at the root of this process in people with severe asthma.

Intrigued by this possibility, Djukanovic and his colleagues sought to reproduce these findings and to see if natural killer T-cells were also present in large numbers in people with milder forms of asthma.

The researchers examined airway cells from 24 people with asthma, 10 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (a combination of emphysema and chronic bronchitis) and 12 healthy controls.

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After examining the cells, the researchers found that fewer than two percent of the T-cells were invariant natural killer T-cells.

"Invariant natural killer T-cells represent a minority population within the airways of both healthy lungs and lungs from patients with asthma or COPD," said Djukanovic, who added that this doesn't necessarily mean that killer T-cells don't play any role in asthma.

"It is still unclear what their role is within the highly complex human immune system, and how changes in invariant natural killer T-cell numbers or function could cause disease," he said.

"Whether or not natural killer T-cells expand in numbers to the extent reported [in past research], studies in animals suggest that these cells are likely to have a role in the pathogenesis of asthma," said Dr. Ling-Pei Ho, of Oxford University in the United Kingdom, in an accompanying editorial.

"This research is still in the exploratory phase, and this study highlights the fact that it depends on how you look for these cells" said Dr. Ricardo Vinuya, an asthma specialist at Providence Hospital and Medical Center in Southfield, Mich. The exciting possibility raised by killer T-cells, he said, is that they would give researchers a new, more specific target for developing new medications.

More information

To learn more about the causes and triggers of asthma, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

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