Scientists from Duke University have found that children with higher genetic risks for asthma are not only more likely to suffer from the breathing disorder during their childhood, but could continue to suffer during adulthood as well.
Researchers from Duke University conducted a 40-year study on New Zealanders to determine a link between higher genetic risks for asthma among children and its duration of suffering. Researchers of the study found that not only are such children more likely to suffer from the breathing disorder during their childhood but the disease could persist in adulthood tool.
"We've been able to look at how newly discovered genetic risks relate to the life course of asthma at an unprecedented level of resolution," said Daniel Belsky, a postdoctoral fellow at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy and the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development in a press statement.
Though previous studies have established that several genes in the body lead to a small increase of asthma risk, researchers of this new study wanted to find out if the effects of all these genes add up to lead to any other consequences. They conducted the study on 1,037 individuals who were tracked since their birth in Dunedin, New Zealand, during a 12-month period from 1972-1973. They calculated a genetic risk score for each of 880 individuals by summing the number of risk variants each of them carried.
They found that the individuals with higher genetic risk developed asthma earlier in life than those with lower risk. Also, the individuals with higher genetic risks were more likely to suffer the illness as adults and had allergic reactions associated with severe and persistent asthma more often than individuals with lower genetic risk. Such people were even found to develop problems with lung functions.
According to a Centers for Disease Control report, more than 26 million people in the United States suffer from asthma, of which more than 7 million are children.
