Children who suffer from acute asthma attacks share a genetic profile that appears to be unique to these children, according to a new study by researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The discovery opens the door to the possibility of designing treatments specifically tailored to children who suffer from the severest forms of asthma. The findings appear in the Feb. 10 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.The study is based on an Affymetrix “GeneChip” analysis of RNA isolated from the nasal epithelium of children who have an acute case of asthma or asthma stabilized with medication. The analysis revealed two distinct gene expression profiles in these groups of children, according to Gurjit K. Khurana Hershey, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Translational Research in Asthma and Allergy at Cincinnati Children’s and senior author of the study.
