Genes and the environment: Two readings of their interaction

摘要

House dust mites have been recognized as important allergens for atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, and particularly asthma in children and in adults. The presence of sensitization to Dermato-phagoides pteronyssinus and Dermatophagoides farinae has been related to both the new onset of disease and the severity of the clinical manifestation. The seemingly apparent implication of such findings was that the level of environmental exposure to the allergen eliciting such an IgE antibody response was the culprit for both the incidence and the severity of the ensuing disease. Indeed, a seminal paper by Sporik et al reporting an admittedly small study in 1990 not only suggested such a relation but also proposed that it has a characteristic configuration, namely a threshold beyond which the exposure affects the incidence of asthma. Thresholds for the effects of house dust mite exposure on atopic sensitization to house dust mites and asthma exacerbations have subsequently been reported