Transcriptional changes in alveolar macrophages from adults with asthma after allergen challenge.

The addition of LPS to HDM mimics a natural allergen exposure as LPS is a widespread pollutant and coexisting with HDM in house dust.7 After seven hours, a bilateral bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was performed. We have shown previously that intrabronchial HDM/LPS challenge induces a mixed eosinophilic and neutrophil airways inflammation in asthma patients.5 Therefore, we hypothesize that exposure of AM to HDM/LPS would upregulate genes associated with eosinophil and neutrophil signaling. Comparing HDM/LPS challenge to saline identified 1013 significantly altered transcripts (fold expression <=-1.2 or >=1.2), of which 485 were upregulated and 528 downregulated as consequence of HDM/LPS challenge (Figure 1B). [Extracted from the article]