Sex- and age-of-onset-based locus heterogeneity in asthma

Asthma is a complex disease with a genetic component. The results of genome-wide linkage studies imply that locus heterogeneity is likely to be an important feature of the genetics of asthma. To attempt to reduce locus heterogeneity, we hypothesized that the following may form the bases for locus heterogeneity at some asthma susceptibility loci: sex of affected individuals, parental origin of alleles shared by affected sib pairs, and age of onset of wheeze. Analysis of such strata may assist in the identification of novel susceptibility loci, or reveal the basis for locus heterogeneity at previously identified loci. Genotype and phenotype data from genome-wide linkage searches for asthma susceptibility loci from three populations were analyzed. Some regions demonstrated evidence for linkage to affected individuals of a particular sex. There was evidence for excess maternal allele sharing at regions on chromosomes 9 and 11. Regions on chromosomes 2 and 6 were linked to late and early age at onset of wheeze in asthma, respectively. These analyses suggest that the bases that we selected for stratification may be appropriate at certain susceptibility loci for asthma, and may therefore assist in the fine mapping of such loci. Differences in such variables between studies may explain apparent nonreplication of linkage results.