Leukotrienes and Other Lipid Mediators of Asthma

¹ From the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston

It is now recognized that, in addition to the preformed mast cell granule mediators, newly generated lipid compounds are likely to be exceedingly important in the mediation of allergic asthma and other atopic diseases. That the initiating event in allergic diseases evokes a far more complex set of biochemical events than those that only lead directly to the release of histamine and other preformed mediators, and that the functional efficacies of the leukotrienes, PGD₂, and PAF are significant for allergic pathobiology mandate that the latter compounds will necessarily be subject to efforts for future therapeutic intervention in allergic patient populations.