Asthma Gene Environment Interactions

Asthma is the major obstructive airway disease in humans. In most cases it starts early in life and genetic as well as environmental factors are thought to contribute to the disease. Heretability is estimated to be 60-70%, suggesting that genetic factors have a major contribution but environment is important for the expression of the disease. While living environments may differ between humans and horses in industrialized countries today, horses and man had shared common environments, even living closely together under one roof for generations. For humans, that traditional farming environment seems to be protective against the development of the major form of asthma, which is associated with allergy. In terms of genetics, the homology between equine and human genome is high. Thus, it may be fruitful for both sides to compare asthma genetic findings in horses and humans […]