The relation of histamine liberation to anaphylaxis / by W.D.M. Paton.

  • Paton, William D. M.
Date:
[1958?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The relation of histamine liberation to anaphylaxis / by W.D.M. Paton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE RELATION OF HISTAMINE LIBERATION TO ANAPHYLAXIS by W. D. M. PATON (Department of Pharmacology, Royal College of Surgeons, London) Possibly the most intriguing problem in allergy is still that of how a piece of sensitized smooth muscle comes to contract, promptly and vigo¬ rously, when exposed to the proper antigen, and I should like to discuss some of the recent work on histamine release in the light of this problem. For a description of the phenomenon, it still seems best to return to Dale’s 1913 paper; and it is interesting to examine how far our recent knowledge goes to answer the questions then raised. At the time a special interest was directed to the possibility that the union of antigen and antibody gave rise to a proteolysis, whose products brought about the physiological responses of anaphylaxis. This paper, backed up the later one with Kellaway, made it impossible to suppose that the contraction of the smooth muscle depended on proteolytic actvity generated in constituents of the blood, since blood appeared totally unnecessary for the response. In addition, the time relationships of the contractile response to antigen, viz. its short latency, its rapid development and early maximum, comparable with those seen with “(3-imidazole- ethylamine”, led him to doubt that any local proteolytic events should be concerned. Such a doubt confronts, of course, any other time-consuming enzymatic process. Dale expressed his own preference at the time for the conception that the union of antigen with cellular fixed antibody created a disturbance of the colloid equilibrium of the limiting membrane of the smooth muscle. The subsequent discovery of the analogies between the response of various tissues to histamine and in anaphylaxis, and of the fact that his¬ tamine is released in many of the situations of antigen-antibody union, gave a new direction to research, diverting it somewhat, away from the study of the contractile response itself, and towards an analysis of histamine, its release and its actions; so that pharmacological evidence of histamine- release, rather than the responses of smooth muscle or blood vessels came to be used extensively and profitably in the analysis of the antigen-antibody effects. But as it became clear that tissues artificially desensitized, or