Anti-inflammatory modulation of chronic airway inflammation in the murine house dust mite model.

Asthma affects 300 million people worldwide and continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Disease relevant animal models of asthma are required for benchmarking of novel therapeutic mechanisms in comparison to established clinical approaches. We demonstrate that chronic exposure of mice to house dust mite (HDM) extract results in allergic airway inflammation, that can be significantly attenuated by therapeutic intervention with phosphodiesterase 4 inhibition and corticosteroid treatment.