Asthma Caused By Bad Air
L A Wood, Daily Californian, October 7, 1999

Here comes another Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientific breakthrough ("Researchers Link Asthma Risk to DNA," Oct. 5) so, snip snip the human genome and reduce the incidence of asthma.
Really? Next LBNL's research will suggest we look for a tree that can live in smog.

Enough already! This story makes good lab news copy, but researchers need to come outside and smell the air. It's not our gene pool which puts us at risk for asthma as much as is it air pollution and our status, i.e. where we live and work, and of course, how young we are.

It's time to stop ignoring these undeniable factors associated with the chronic exposure to air pollution. It's easy to overstate the incidence of genetically-disposed risk to asthma, when in fact, the continual exposure to air pollution obviously creates a much larger risk.

A recently compiled, four county study (including Alameda County) of asthma-related hospitalizations concluded that "children less than fifteen, African Americans, and those living in urban areas have high rates of hospitalization." Genetic disposition is but a small part of this picture.

Who is surprised? This regional asthma profile reflects a national trend, which has grown at an alarming rate over the last two decades. As for science, it continues to look under the wrong rock for the answer. This common research approach is seen in the science of breast cancer, too.

Researchers spend millions developing miracle drugs to manage this cancer, instead of examining its direct prevention. That's because no pill will ever clean up the environment. Perhaps it's time for us taxpayers to get smart by funding a little less research while demanding higher air quality standards that make it safe enough to breathe.

Researchers Link Asthma Risk to DNA Anne Benjaminson, Daily Californian, October 5, 1999

UC Berkeley researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced Friday they have discovered that certain human genes are linked to increased levels of asthma.
Dr. Edward Rubin, a UC Berkeley researcher, and Derek Symula, a post-doctoral fellow, reported in the science journal Nature Genetics that Rubin's group isolated two genes that likely increase an individual's odds of contracting asthma.

The team said they used a new technique to identify the genes. Instead of using the "brute-force method" that involves comparing the gene by gene make-up of asthmatic DNA to non-asthmatic DNA, the researchers examined sets of genes that are associated with allergic activity.

"We started with a region of chromosome-5, which we knew had something to do with asthma," Symula said.
The group chose which genes to test for association with asthma and then inserted the genetic data from humans into mouse DNA. These mice then expressed the gene, providing researchers with information about the way the genes affect asthma, according to Symula.

"We spent some time trying to decide which genes in there were important, and then we asked the mice which pieces of the DNA were important," he said.

The researchers tested the mice for several attributes of asthma, including lung inflammation and the concentration of Immunoglobulin E, a type of antibody that is involved in allergic attacks, Symula said.
In addition, chemicals that control the immune system's activity have different effects on production levels of the antibody. Varying amounts of the chemicals, and thus of the immunoglobulin, can make humans more or less susceptible to asthma, Symula said.

Although a person's genetic makeup could raise their susceptibility to asthma, Symula said environmental factors can also play a role in the development of the disease.

"The current paradigm is that there is both a genetic and environmental component to every disease," Symula said. "If you are predisposed to allergic asthma and live in a perfectly clean environment, you're going to be fine."

Pollutants such as dust mite antigens, which include anything that the immune system can react to, can contribute to the disease, especially in more industrialized countries with better insulation, which traps these pollutants indoors, he added.

Although the discovery is a step toward controlling asthma, Symula said he is reluctant to call it a cure.
"I don't like to think in terms of a cure - I like to think in terms of treatments and think about therapies," Symula said.

While the information about the genetic basis of asthma is important, Symula said that the success of the new technique to identify genes is also significant.

"We're excited about the general approach, which we hope can be applied to other complex disorders such as hypertension and obesity," he said.

The research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
Rubin, the head of the project, is also the leader of the functional genomics program at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. He has previously conducted similar research on sickle cell disease and arteriosclerosis.