Rosenberg HF, Dyer KD, Foster PS (2013) Eosinophils: changing perspectives in health and disease.Rothenberg ME, Hogan SP (2006) The eosinophil.We believe that the described methods may play an important role in future studies because as yet the function of histamine receptors on the other immune cells remains elusive. Methods include: isolation of human eosinophils from peripheral blood, functional determination of the effects of histamine receptors’ ligands (including selective histamine receptor agonists and antagonists), and data elaboration. Therefore in this chapter we discuss the tools and provide step-by-step protocols used in the pharmacological evaluation of histamine H 4 receptor function in primary human eosinophils. For histamine H 4 receptor functional studies immune cells, including human eosinophils, were mainly used.
Recently in order to overcome the limitations of recombinant systems, several important works were published that focus on the histamine receptors’ function in native human cells. Unfortunately, they do not reflect the real biological situation, as the receptors are artificially introduced to host system and usually expressed in high quantity, not regulated as in native cells. These biological models proved to be ideal in the determination of the receptors’ function, biochemistry, and molecular signaling pathways. Most of the research on the histamine receptors in in vitro studies was accomplished using recombinant systems.