The immediate degranulation response
Basophil reactivity has been associated with severity of allergic symptoms while sensitivity has been correlated with the allergen threshold(17),(18). Increasing affinity increases both reactivity and sensitivity of a mast cell response (Figure 1A). Previous work has shown that clonality of IgE and the relative concentrations of IgE clones play a role in basophil activation (8) as well as in mast cell activation (9). We find that PGD2 is secreted by mast cells with increased sensitivity and reactivity when activated by high affinity IgE with a peak at 3 hours (Figure 1b), and that metabolites PGJ2, delta-12-PGJ2 and 15-deoxy-delta-12, 14 PGJ2, accumulate at later time points to support this finding (Figure 1 c-f).