New Genes that Contribute to Asthma Identified

Asthma affects roughly 200 million people around the world, resulting in difficulty breathing, coughing and sneezing. In more rare cases, it can even cause panic attacks or fainting.

Researchers at the La Jolla Institute (LJK) have now identified new genes that likely contribute to the health issue, with findings published in the journal Nature Immunology.

Previous studies have shown that health officials may study an organism's genetic material to gain a better understanding of various health issues. By examining a genome, they can increase the production of genes in the immediate neighborhood with help of an enhancer.

For this study, researchers focused on memory cells in asthmatic disease that develop abnormally in asthma patients. These cells are responsible for quickly responding to foreign substances known as antigens that a host has been previously exposed to. As asthma is characterized by air passage inflammation, this results in an overactive response of inhaled antigens through the memory cells.

Researchers applied this technique to small populations of abnormal memory cells and highlighted highly active diseased cells.
With a more precise approach, researchers searched 1,500 targets with a high likelihood of contributing to asthmatic disease.

"Our unbiased and hypothesis-free approach has revealed a staggering but manageable number of new molecules that could play a role in asthma, and thus are potentially novel therapeutic targets," said Pandurangan Vijayanand, Ph.D., of the institute, via a news release. 

Researchers finished the study with different amounts of cells from the blood of healthy individuals. They discovered that the smallest amount of cells required for this technique was as little as 10,000. For the future, Vijayanand hopes to use the technique in situations where cell access is limited, such as tumor biopsy for cancer.