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From the * Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School,
Boston, Massachusetts 02115; The chemokines are a large group of chemotactic cytokines that regulate leukocyte trafficking
and have recently been shown to inhibit human immunodeficiency virus entry into cells. Eotaxin is a C-C chemokine implicated in the recruitment of eosinophils in a variety of inflammatory disorders and, unlike all other eosinophil chemoattractants, is eosinophil specific. However, given the large number of chemoattractants that have activities on eosinophils, it is
unclear whether eotaxin has an important role in vivo. Furthermore, it remains unclear why
there is constitutive expression of eotaxin in healthy states in the absence of eosinophilic inflammation. To begin to determine the significance of eotaxin at baseline and during eosinophil-mediated disease processes, we have used targeted gene disruption to generate mice that
are deficient in eotaxin. Such mice demonstrate that eotaxin enhances the magnitude of the
early (but not late) eosinophil recruitment after antigen challenge in models of asthma and stromal keratitis. Surprisingly, a role for eotaxin in regulating the constitutive number of eosinophils in the peripheral circulation is also demonstrated. These results indicate a contributory
role for eotaxin in the generation of peripheral blood and antigen-induced tissue eosinophilia.
Allergy Unit, § Infectious Disease Unit, Department of Medicine,
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114;
Division of Geographic Medicine,
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106
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