Variants of DENND1B Associated with Asthma in Children

Background Asthma is a complex disease that has genetic and environmental causes. The genetic factors associated with susceptibility to asthma remain largely unknown. Methods We carried out a genomewide association study involving children with asthma. The sample included 793 North American children of European ancestry with persistent asthma who required daily inhaled glucocorticoid therapy and 1988 matched controls (the discovery set). We also tested for genomewide association in an independent cohort of 917 persons of European ancestry who had asthma and 1546 matched controls (the replication set). Finally, we tested for an association between 20 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at chromosome 1q31 and asthma in 1667 North American children of African ancestry who had asthma and 2045 ancestrally matched controls. Results In our meta-analysis of all samples from persons of European ancestry, we observed an association, with genomewide significance, between asthma and SNPs at the previously reported...