Two New Asthma Genes Uncovered

摘要

A painstaking, decade-long hunt spanning two continents has led a team of Finnish sci-entists to two new asthma genes. Geneticists don't yet know what role the genes play in asthma, which afflicts about 16 million people in the United States alone. But scientists say that the work, described on page 300, has uncovered some of the most compelling genetic associations yet for the disease. Although researchers had previously linked three other genes to asthma, those studies involved fewer individuals and mostly found a relatively weak genetic effect in conferring susceptibility. Not only are the current associations strong, but one of the new genes may be a good target for novel antiasthma drugs. "One of the beauties of this is that they came up with a drug target," says Jack Elias, a pulmonary specialist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.