The immediate degranulation response
Basophil reactivity has been associated with severity of allergic
symptoms while sensitivity has been correlated with the allergen
threshold(17),(18). Increasing affinity increases both
reactivity and sensitivity of a mast cell response (Figure 1A). Previous
work has shown that clonality of IgE and the relative concentrations of
IgE clones play a role in basophil activation (8) as well as in mast
cell activation (9). We find that PGD2 is secreted by
mast cells with increased sensitivity and reactivity when activated by
high affinity IgE with a peak at 3 hours (Figure 1b), and that
metabolites PGJ2, delta-12-PGJ2 and
15-deoxy-delta-12, 14 PGJ2, accumulate at later time
points to support this finding (Figure 1 c-f).