Anaphylaxis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anaphylaxis, including details on food allergies, diagnosis, treatment, causes.

The cysteinyl leukotrienes: where do they come from? What are they? Where are they going?

Austen KF

Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. fausten@rics.bwh.harvard.edu

Cysteinyl leukotrienes are established mediators of bronchial asthma and have agonist roles analogous to those of histamine in allergic rhinitis. We now know that the substance originally termed slow-reacting substance of anaphylaxis was composed of three cysteinyl leukotrienes that act in the inflammatory response via receptors on smooth muscle and on bone marrow-derived inflammatory cells. K. Frank Austen describes the work culminating in the identification, biosynthesis and functional characterization of these moieties.

Published 21 January 2008 in Nat Immunol, 9(2): 113-5.
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