A genome-wide search for linkage to asthma

Asthma is among the most frequent chronic diseases in childhood. Although n umerous environmental risk factors have already been identified, the basis for familial occurrence of asthma remains unclear. Previous genome screens for atopy in British/Australian families and for asthma in different Americ an populations showed inconsistent results. We report a sib pair study of a sample of 97 families, including 415 persons and 156 sib pairs. Following an extensive clinical evaluation, all participants were genotyped for 351 p olymorphic dinucleotide markers. Linkage analysis for asthma identified fou r chromosomal regions that could to be linked to asthma: chromosome 2 (at m arker D2S2298, P = 0.007), chromosome 6 (around D6S291, lowest P = 0.008), chromosome 9 (proximal to D9S1784, P = 0.007), and chromosome 12 (D12S351, P = 0.010). These linkage regions could be reproduced for all loci by analy sis of total or specific immunoglobulin E (minimum P values at these region s were 0.003, 0.001, 0.010, and 0.015, respectively). (C) 1999 Academic Pre ss.