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Overview of the pharmacogenetics of asthma treatment

The Pharmacogenomics Journal volume 6, pages 311–326 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Asthma affects approximately 300 million individuals worldwide. Medications comprise a substantial portion of asthma expenditures. Despite the availability of three primary therapeutic classes of medications, there are a significant number of nonresponders to therapy. Available data, as well as previous pharmacogenetic studies, suggest that genetics may contribute as much as 60–80% to the interindividual variability in treatment response. In this methodologic review, after providing a broad overview of the asthma pharmacogenetics literature to date, we describe the application of a novel family-based screening algorithm to the analysis of pharmacogenetic data and highlight our approach to identifying and verifying loci influencing asthma treatment response. This approach seeks to address issues related to multiple comparisons, statistical power, population stratification, and failure to replicate from which previous population-based or case–control pharmacogenetic association studies may suffer. Identification of such replicable loci is the next step towards the goal of ‘individualized therapy’ for asthma.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Nina Joshi for her assistance with the preparation of this manuscript. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health U01 HL65899: The Pharmacogenetics of Asthma Treatment. We thank all families for their enthusiastic participation in the Camp Genetics Ancillary Study, supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NO1-HR-16049.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    S T Weiss, A A Litonjua, R Lazarus & K G Tantisira

  2. Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    C Lange

  3. Department of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

    S B Liggett

  4. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Center for Human Genomics, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    E R Bleecker

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  1. S T Weiss
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Correspondence to K G Tantisira.

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Weiss, S., Litonjua, A., Lange, C. et al. Overview of the pharmacogenetics of asthma treatment. Pharmacogenomics J 6, 311–326 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.tpj.6500387

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