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Review
. 2016 Oct 19:12:52.
doi: 10.1186/s13223-016-0158-5. eCollection 2016.

Genetic and epigenetic studies of atopic dermatitis

Lianghua Bin  1 , Donald Y M Leung  2
Affiliations
Review

Genetic and epigenetic studies of atopic dermatitis

Lianghua Bin et al. Allergy Asthma Clin Immunol. .

Abstract

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by the complex interaction of genetic, immune and environmental factors. There have many recent discoveries involving the genetic and epigenetic studies of AD.

Methods: A retrospective PubMed search was carried out from June 2009 to June 2016 using the terms "atopic dermatitis", "association", "eczema", "gene", "polymorphism", "mutation", "variant", "genome wide association study", "microarray" "gene profiling", "RNA sequencing", "epigenetics" and "microRNA". A total of 132 publications in English were identified.

Results: To elucidate the genetic factors for AD pathogenesis, candidate gene association studies, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and transcriptomic profiling assays have been performed in this period. Epigenetic mechanisms for AD development, including genomic DNA modification and microRNA posttranscriptional regulation, have been explored. To date, candidate gene association studies indicate that filaggrin (FLG) null gene mutations are the most significant known risk factor for AD, and genes in the type 2 T helper lymphocyte (Th2) signaling pathways are the second replicated genetic risk factor for AD. GWAS studies identified 34 risk loci for AD, these loci also suggest that genes in immune responses and epidermal skin barrier functions are associated with AD. Additionally, gene profiling assays demonstrated AD is associated with decreased gene expression of epidermal differentiation complex genes and elevated Th2 and Th17 genes. Hypomethylation of TSLP and FCER1G in AD were reported; and miR-155, which target the immune suppressor CTLA-4, was found to be significantly over-expressed in infiltrating T cells in AD skin lesions.

Conclusions: The results suggest that two major biologic pathways are responsible for AD etiology: skin epithelial function and innate/adaptive immune responses. The dysfunctional epidermal barrier and immune responses reciprocally affect each other, and thereby drive development of AD.

Keywords: Adaptive immunity; Atopic dermatitis; DNA methylation; Epigenetic; Genetic association; Genetics; Innate immunity; Skin barrier; miRNA.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Genes associated with AD in at least 1 publication. Genes are grouped based on the reported positive association studies (see Additional file 1: Table S1 in the supplemental materials for a complete summary of 91 published studies). The Y-axis indicates the number of genes. The X-axis indicates the corresponding number of positive association reported
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The schematic illustration of AD etiology. Genetic and epigenetic reasons lead to the alteration of gene expression and function of AD associated genes. AD associated genes majorly belong to two pathways: skin barrier and innate/adaptive immunity. Dysregulation of innate/adaptive immune responses and impaired skin barrier reciprocally affect each other to drive AD development
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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