Inhibition of tryptase release from human colon mast cells by histamine receptor antagonists

The main objective of this study was to investigate the ability of histamine receptor antagonists to modulate tryptase release from human colon mast cells induced by histamine. Enzymatically dispersed cells from human colon were challenged with histamine in the absence or presence of the histamine receptor antagonists, and the tryptase release was determined. It was found that histamine induced tryptase release from colon mast cells was inhibited by up to approximately 61.5% and 24% by the H-1 histamine receptor antagonist terfenadine and the H-2 histamine receptor antagonist cimetidine, respectively, when histamine and its antagonists were added to cells at the same time. The H-3 histamine receptor antagonist clobenpropit had no effect on histamine induced tryptase release from colon mast cells at all concentrations tested. Preincubation of terfenadine, cimetidine or clobenpropit with cells for 20 minutes before challenging with histamine did not enhance the ability of these antihistamines to inhibit histamine induced tryptase release. Apart from terfenadine at 100 mu g/ml, the antagonists themselves did not stimulate tryptase release from colon mast cells following both 15 minutes and 35 minutes incubation periods. It was concluded that H-1 and H-2 histamine receptor antagonists were able to inhibit histamine induced tryptase release from colon mast cells. This not only added some new data to our hypothesis of self-amplification mechanisms of mast cell degranulation, but also suggested that combining these two types of antihistamine drugs could be useful for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).