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. 2020 Jan;145(1):192-198.e11.
doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2019.06.044. Epub 2019 Jul 29.

Genetic ancestry does not explain increased atopic dermatitis susceptibility or worse disease control among African American subjects in 2 large US cohorts

Katrina Abuabara  1 , Yue You  2 , David J Margolis  3 , Thomas J Hoffmann  4 , Neil Risch  5 , Eric Jorgenson  6
Affiliations

Genetic ancestry does not explain increased atopic dermatitis susceptibility or worse disease control among African American subjects in 2 large US cohorts

Katrina Abuabara et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2020 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is more common among African American children. Whether there are racial/ethnic difference among adults with AD and the causes for those disparities are unclear.

Objective: We sought to examine the relationship between self-reported race/ethnicity and AD and determine whether African genetic ancestry is predictive of these outcomes among African American subjects.

Methods: We analyzed data from 2 independent multiethnic longitudinal studies: 86,893 subjects aged 18 to 100 years from the Kaiser Permanente Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) cohort and 5467 subjects aged 2 to 26 years from the national Pediatric Eczema Elective Registry (PEER) cohort. The primary outcomes were physician-diagnosed AD in GERA and repeated measures of self-reported disease control among patients with physician-diagnosed AD at 6-month intervals in PEER. We examined whether self-identified African American race/ethnicity was predictive of these outcomes and then tested whether a continuous measure of African genetic ancestry was associated with outcomes within the African American group.

Results: AD was more common among self-identified African American subjects than non-Hispanic white subjects in GERA (4.4% vs 2.1%; odds ratio, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.70-2.48) and less well-controlled in PEER subjects (odds of 1-level worse control, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.64-2.22). However, African genetic ancestry was not associated with AD risk or control among self-identified African American subjects in either cohort, nor did an AD polygenic risk score or genetic skin pigment score explain the AD disparities in patients with AD.

Conclusion: Ancestry-related genetic effects do not explain increased AD prevalence or poorer disease control among African American subjects.

Keywords: Atopic dermatitis; disease control; eczema; genetic ancestry; racial/ethnic disparities.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest: KA receives research funding for atopic dermatitis from the NIH and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and is a consultant to TARGETPharma, a company developing a prospective atopic dermatitis registry. DM receives funding for research on atopic dermatitis from the NIH and Valeant, and he is a consultant for Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. The rest of the authors have nothing to declare.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Association between self-reported race/ethnicity and atopic dermatitis control in the PEER cohort
The graph is a local polynomial smoothed plot with grey shading for the 95% confidence intervals generated from cross-sectional calculations of the average atopic dermatitis control level at each age.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Atopic dermatitis, race, and genetics.
    Kumar R, Seibold MA, Burchard EG. Kumar R, et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2020 Jan;145(1):108-110. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2019.11.008. Epub 2019 Nov 15. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2020. PMID: 31738993 No abstract available.

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