On the generation of allergic airway diseases: from GM-CSF to Kyoto

The sharp increase in the prevalence of asthma over the past three decades suggests an important contribution of environmental factors in the generation of this disease, and compels a search for molecular pathways by which such factors could facilitate Th2 immune-inflammatory airway responses; granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) might be one such signal. In this review, we appraise the evidence with respect to the presence …