PRACTITIONER’S CORNER Peripheral Dendritic Cells in Asthma

T reguladora. Dendritic cells (DCs) affect helper T cell (TH) cell commitment [1]. The two major DC subsets are myeloid DCs (mDCs), which shift the T-cell response in the direction of TH2 cells [2], and plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs), which induce regulatory T cells (Tregs) and which are major inhibitors of adaptive immunity [3]. We studied the association between prevalence of DC subsets and specifi c target cells (Tregs, TH1 CD4+, and TH2 CD4+ cells) and asthma symptoms. We enrolled 28 patients (15 men, 13 women) with persistent asthma of differing severity (values expressed as median [interquartile range]). The Asthma Control Test (ACT) [4] score was 20 (16-22), median age was 32 (29-39) years, and the body mass index was 23.37 (21.04-26.92). Patients were taking inhaled corticosteroid