Asthma: New Genetic Regions Involved In Severity And Expression

Main Category: Respiratory / Asthma
Also Included In: Genetics
Article Date: 26 Jul 2007 - 15:00 PDT

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Currently, there is a debate about how asthma should be defined, so that progress can be made in the understanding of underlying mechanisms and, particularly, in the identification of genes involved in this disease.

Emmanuelle Bouzigon (INSERM U794, Evry, France) and her colleagues examined 110 asthmatic families who were already part of the French Epidemiological Study on the Genetics and Environment of Asthma (EGEA). The study involved more than 2,000 subjects aged 4 to 70 years. They answered a detailed questionnaire regarding respiratory symptoms and environmental exposure, and they performed biological and physiological tests.

For the first time in a genetic study, the authors consider scores of asthma and asthma severity by combining clinical symptoms and treatment. The scores allow the representation of the whole spectrum of disease expression, in order to increase the power to detect new genetic regions.

The study identifies two new chromosomal regions specifically involved in asthma severity on the one hand and in asthma expression on the other hand. Moreover, the authors show that different genetic components appear to underlie asthma expression and various dimensions of asthma severity.

The identification of the genes underlying asthma severity and asthma expression may have important implication for improving early detection of high-risk groups and for helping the development of new therapeutic targets.

European Respiratory Journal