The Eicosanoids of Asthma

Abstract

Nowadays, bronchial asthma is generally regarded as a disease of allergy. Its expression can be attributed to a constitutional predisposition which not only manifests itself as a hypersensitivity to various allergens, but also as an altered resistance of the airways.¹ Fifty years after this formulation of asthma emerged from the school of Clemens von Pirquet, we are on the verge of understanding how chemically defined mediators produced by "hypersensitivity to various allergens" cause "altered resistance of the airways."Asthmatic attacks are triggered not only by extrinsic agents such as inhaled antigens but also by ill-defined "intrinsic" factors; both lead to . . .