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The role of IgG antibodies in allergy and immunotherapy

R Aalberse1

  • 1Sanquin Research and Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. r.aalberse@sanquin.nl

Allergy
|June 15, 2011
PubMed

In specific immunotherapy (SIT), a beneficial response is associated with an increase in allergen-specific IgG(4) . This does not indicate that IgE-producing B cells have switched to IgG(4) production, because in human DNA, IgE is downstream from IgG(4) . Thus, by conventional switching, B cells should produce IgG(4) before IgE. This presentation discusses three possible hypotheses explaining the favourable association between IgG(4) and SIT, including that SIT causes B cells to become regulatory. Regulatory B cells may produce cytokines like IL-10 that promote IgG(4) production. IgG(4) can undergo in vitro switching to create bispecific antibodies that recognize more than one antigen, which has important consequences for reducing IgE-allergen complexes in immunotherapy.

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