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Review
. 2019 Mar;11(2):170-187.
doi: 10.4168/aair.2019.11.2.170.

Lessons Learned From GWAS of Asthma

Kyung Won Kim  1 , Carole Ober  2
Affiliations
Review

Lessons Learned From GWAS of Asthma

Kyung Won Kim et al. Allergy Asthma Immunol Res. 2019 Mar.

Abstract

Asthma is a common complex disease of the airways. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of asthma have identified many risk alleles and loci that have been replicated in worldwide populations. Although the risk alleles identified by GWAS have small effects and explain only a small portion of prevalence, the discovery of asthma loci can provide an understanding of its genetic architecture and the molecular pathways involved in disease pathogenesis. These discoveries can translate into advances in clinical care by identifying therapeutic targets, preventive strategies and ultimately approaches for personalized medicine. In this review, we summarize results from GWAS of asthma from the past 10 years and the insights gleaned from these discoveries.

Keywords: Asthma; genome-wide association study.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no financial or other issues that might lead to conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure
Figure. Word cloud consisting of asthma risk genes from asthma GWASs (see Table 2 for references). Genes at genome-wide significant loci were selected based on the nearest gene. Word weight was assigned based on the number of times these genes were at loci that met the criteria for genome-wide significance. Word cloud was made using R package ‘wordcloud’ version 2.5. Figure drawn by H. Jang.
GWAS, genome-wide association study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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