Immune responses to inhalant mammalian allergens

REVIEW ARTICLE

Front. Immunol., 21 May 2014 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00234

François Hentges¹, Cathy Léonard¹, Karthik Arumugam² and Christiane Hilger¹*

• 1Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Allergology, CRP-Santé, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
• 2Laboratory of Retrovirology, CRP-Santé, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

In Europe and the USA, at least one person in four is exposed every day to inhalant allergens of mammalian origin, a considerable number is regularly exposed for professional reasons and almost everyone is occasionally exposed to inhalant allergens from pets or domestic animals. The production of IgE to these inhalant allergens, often complicated by asthma and rhinitis, defines the atopic status. However, the immune response to these allergens largely imprints the cellular immune compartment and also drives non-IgE humoral immune responses in the allergic and non-allergic population. During the recent years, it has become clear that IgE antibodies recognize mammalian allergens that belong to three protein or glycoprotein families: the secretoglobins, the lipocalins, and the serum albumins. In this article, we review the humoral and cellular immune responses to the major members of these families and try to define common characteristics and also distinctive features.

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Keywords: secretoglobin, lipocalin, albumin, allergen, cellular response, IgE response, cross-reactivity

Citation: Hentges F, Léonard C, Arumugam K and Hilger C (2014) Immune responses to inhalant mammalian allergens.Front. Immunol. 5:234. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00234

Received: 07 February 2014; Accepted: 06 May 2014;
Published online: 21 May 2014.

Edited by:

Kendall A. Smith, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, USA

Reviewed by:

Beatrice Jahn-Schmid, Medical University of Vienna, Austria
Markus Ollert, Technische Universität München, Germany

Copyright: © 2014 Hentges, Léonard, Arumugam and Hilger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Christiane Hilger, Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Allergology, CRP-Santé, 84 Val Fleuri, Luxembourg L-1526, Luxembourg e-mail: christiane.hilger@crp-sante.lu