Asthma is a multifactorial disease, and estimates of morbidity and contribution of genetic factors to asthma vary widely by country and race.This is because asthma is easily affected by differences in the environment and has various symptoms.So far, only 20 loci have been associated with asthma from 21 studies.

　The "International Collaborative Research Transnational Asthology Genetics Consortium" was established to discover new loci related to asthma.A joint research team also participated.We performed a large-scale genome-wide association study in a large population (more than 142,000 people) around the world, which is currently the largest.

　As a result, we have built a comprehensive catalog of 18 loci and 878 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) * that are less susceptible to differences in race and environment and are at risk of asthma.We found 5 loci associated with asthma.We also found a new asthma-related SNP different from the known one in the two loci suggested by the complications of asthma and hay fever.Analysis revealed that these overlap significantly with related SNPs in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.At the same time, it was also shown that asthma-related SNPs may be responsible for controlling immune relationships.

　This result can be expected to be an effective asthma drug by elucidating the mechanism of asthma onset and discovering related molecular targets.In addition, the discovered SNP group may be used as a disease gene marker for predicting the risk of developing asthma.

* Single nucleotide polymorphisms are found in the genome sequence of a population (individual differences, diversity), especially when differences are observed in 1% or more of the population.

Paper information:[Nature Genetics] Multiances try association study identifies new asthma risk loci that colocalize with immune-cell enhancer marks