The experiments were conducted during the course of two recently
published studies [16,18], according to protocols approved by the
appropriate review board, and the results are cumulatively reported
here. Consenting fibrocyte donors were 19 patients with asthma well
controlled by current treatment [18], 16 patients with treatmentresistant asthma [18], 9 patients with transiently uncontrolled asthma because of an allergen-induced exacerbation [16], and 14 agematched normal individuals [16]. The demographic and clinical characteristics of these patients are described in every detail in the
two published articles [16,18]. Blood sampling was performed once in patients with transiently uncontrolled asthma and twice, at an interval of one week, in the other subjects.