RESEARCH ARTICLE
Cystatin SN Upregulation in Patients with Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis
Abstract
Seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR) to the Japanese cedar, Cryptomeria japonica (JC) pollen is an IgE-mediated type I allergy affecting nasal mucosa. However, the molecular events underlying its development remain unclear. We sought to identify SAR-associated altered gene expression in nasal epithelial cells during natural exposure to JC pollen. We recruited study participants in 2009 and 2010 and collected nasal epithelial cells between February and April, which is the period of natural pollen dispersion. Fifteen patients with SAR-JC and 13 control subjects were enrolled in 2009, and 17 SAR-JC patients, 13 sensitized asymptomatic subjects (Sensitized), and 15 control subjects were enrolled in 2010. Total RNA was extracted from nasal epithelial cells and 8 SAR-JC patients and 6 control subjects in 2009 were subjected to microarray analysis with the Illumina HumanRef-8 Expression BeadChip platform. Allergen-stimulated histamine release was examined in the peripheral blood basophils isolated from patients with SAR. We identified 32 genes with significantly altered expression during allergen exposure. One of these, CST1 encodes the cysteine protease inhibitor, cystatin SN. CST1expression in nasal epithelial cells was significantly upregulated in both the 2009 and 2010 SAR-JC groups compared with the control groups. Immunohistochemical staining confirmed the increased expression of CST1 in the nasal epithelial cells of SAR patients. Addition of exogenous CST1 to basophils inhibited JC allergen-stimulated histamine release in vitro. We propose that CST1 may contribute to inactivation of protease allergens and help re-establish homeostasis of the nasal membranes.
Citation: Imoto Y, Tokunaga T, Matsumoto Y, Hamada Y, Ono M, et al. (2013) Cystatin SN Upregulation in Patients with Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis. PLoS ONE 8(8): e67057. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067057
Editor: Susanne Krauss-Etschmann, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany
Received: January 19, 2013; Accepted: May 13, 2013; Published: August 12, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Imoto et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This study was supported by research grants from Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) grant number 20590327, from Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan, and from a Grant-in-Aid for Science Research from the Ministry of health and Welfare (H23-Immunoloy-006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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