Epigenetics and Childhood Asthma: Current Evidence and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood, affecting one in eight children in the USA and worldwide. It is a complex disease, influenced by both environmental exposures and genetic factors. Although epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation, histone modification and miRNA) can affect transcriptional activity in multiple genetic pathways relevant for asthma development, very limited work has been carried out so far to examine the role of epigenetic variations on asthma development and management. This review provides a brief overview of epigenetic modifications, summarizes recent findings, and discusses some of the major methodological concerns that are relevant for asthma epigenetics.

KEYWORDS::

• asthma
• DNA methylation
• epidemiology
• epigenetics
• genetics
• histone modifications
• miRNA
• natural history
• risk factors

Acknowledgements

The authors apologize to all their colleagues whose important work could not be directly cited.

Financial&competing interests disclosure

This work was supported by the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (CA, USA; grant number 5P30ES007048) funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NC, USA). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (CA, USA; grant number 5P30ES007048) funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NC, USA). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.