Thank you for this, Andrew, it's very helpful.
Take care,
Paul
Andrew Hall wrote:
>> Hi Paul,
>> Th1/2 immunity is accepted although it is now considered to be a spectrum.
> Therefore a response can be thought of as biased towards either Th1 or Th2
> assuming the predominant cytokine driving that response is IL-12/IFN or IL-4
> respectively. Some responses can have elements of both cytokine profiles and
> a term I have often come across for this is Th0 (ie both IL-4 and IFN are
> produced in significant ammounts). More recently it has become a little more
> complicated with the identification of regulatory T-helper cells. These are
> currenly defined as Th3 (producing TGF-beta1) and Tr1 (producing IL-10).
> Another subset of regulatory cells that mediate their supressive effects
> through cell contact rather than cytokines have been identified. These
> supressive CD4+CD25+ cells are apparently anergic (although I always though
> anergy was defined as 'functional unresponsiveness'). If you have a look
> through the December issues of Current Opinion in Immunology from the past
> few years there are some excellent reviews on this topic (try biomednet for
> free back issues www.bmn.com ). Anyhow to cut a long story short Th1/2
> immunity is still accepted however it is an oversimplification of a more
> complex system.
>> Andrew Hall
> University of Aberdeen
