Tobacco Gene-Environment Interactions &amp; Minority Asthmatics
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Asthma is a common disease that results from both genetic and environmental risk factors. Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been associated with asthma and asthma severity. Although virtually all individuals are exposed to ETS, only a subset goes on to develop asthma or have an increase in asthma symptoms. This would suggest that the response to ETS varies among individuals, which may be explained by genetic susceptibility. We have previously demonstrated that there are gene-environment interactions between genetic variant in the CD14 gene and ETS exposure that result in more severe asthma among Mexican and Puerto Rican children. Additionally gene-environment interactions that are likely to be important to asthma include interactions between ETS exposure and genes related to xenobiotic metabolism and oxidative stress pathways. Despite the fact that asthma prevalence and mortality are especially high in minority populations, they, for the most part have not been included in asthma clinical, genetic and/or epidemiologic research. Therefore, we will focus our studies of these interactions on three ethnic minority populations: African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. We have carefully selected fifteen candidate genes from pathways involved in xenobiotic metabolism and oxidative stress. These genes were selected based on our preliminary studies of asthma-related clinical characteristics in minority populations and from published literature on genetic association studies performed in other non-minority populations. The Specific Aims of this proposal include performing a high throughput screen of these asthma candidate genes in 700 Mexican and Puerto Rican families and 467 African American asthma cases and controls. We will analyze these genes for gene-environment interactions with ETS exposure and their association with asthma and asthma severity. We will then replicate positive associations from high throughput screen in additional but separate populations of Latinos (GALA 2, n=1600) and African American asthma cases and controls (SAGE 2, n=600). The focus on gene-ETS interactions in minority populations will help to better understand the striking population-based differences observed with respect to asthma prevalence and severity. Our findings may contribute to better understanding of the etiology of asthma as it relates to all populations. Furthermore, our results may provide a way to identify individuals at high risk of more severe asthma due to ETS exposure. This information will be of great benefit in designing intervening strategies that aim to reduce the toll taken by severe asthma in minority populations. By gaining a better understanding of the interaction between genetic factors and ETS, this proposal is consistent with the goal established by TRDRP to better understand the impact of tobacco smoke on development and progression of a disease to the betterment of health for all populations.