Measuring human leukocyte antigen alloantibodies: beyond a binary decision.

Purpose Of Review: Accurate measurement of human leukocyte antigen antibodies is critical for making clinical decisions treating patients awaiting transplantation or monitoring them post transplantation. Single antigen bead assay results are given as Mean Fluorescence Intensity, falling short of providing the required quantitative measure.

Recent Findings: Titration studies were shown to circumvent the limitation of target-saturation that affect interpretation of single antigen bead assays especially in highly sensitized patients with strong antibodies.

Allergens stimulate store-operated calcium entry and cytokine production in airway epithelial cells.

Aberrant immune responses to environmental allergens including insect allergens from house dust mites and cockroaches contribute to allergic inflammatory diseases such as asthma in susceptible individuals. Airway epithelial cells (AECs) play a critical role in this process by sensing the proteolytic activity of allergens via protease-activated receptors (PAR2) to initiate inflammatory and immune responses in the airway. Elevation of cytosolic Ca(2+) is an important signaling event in this process, yet the fundamental mechanism by which allergens induce Ca(2+) elevations in AECs remains poorly understood.