Researchers report that a genome-wide association study demonstrated that childhood-onset asthma was associated with nearly three times as many genes as adult-onset asthma.
We detected 61 independent asthma loci: 23 were childhood-onset specific, one was adult-onset specific, and 37 were shared. Nineteen loci were associated with age of asthma onset. The most significant asthma-associated locus was at 17q12 in the childhood-onset GWAS.
Genes at the childhood onset-specific loci were most highly expressed in skin, blood, and small intestine; genes at the adult onset-specific loci were most highly expressed in lung, blood, small intestine, and spleen.
