An international research team recently said that they have discovered 20 new risk genes related to allergic rhinitis, which is expected to find new targets for the prevention and treatment of allergic rhinitis.
Allergic rhinitis is also known as hay fever. The patient is mainly allergic to pollen, dust mites and animal hair. It is characterized by paroxysmal sneezing, a large amount of nasal discharge, and itchy nose. In severe cases, symptoms such as itchy eyes, stuffy nose, and decreased sense of smell may occur.
The international research team published Genome-wide association and HLA fine-mapping studies identify risk loci and genetic pathways underlying allergic rhinitis in the new issue of the journal Nature Genetics. They collected data of nearly 900,000 people and searched the risk genes associated with allergic rhinitis. It is the genetic difference between patients with allergic rhinitis and healthy people.
The researchers first compared the genomes of 60,000 patients and 150,000 healthy people in the control group, identifying 42 risk genes associated with allergic rhinitis, some of which have been documented in the literature.
Subsequently, the researchers compared the genomes of another 60,000 patients and 620,000 healthy people, confirming that 20 previously undiscovered risk genes are associated with allergic rhinitis. The researchers said that the identified risk genes could explain the cause of approximately 8% of allergic rhinitis cases.
The researchers used the database to further confirm the function of these genes, and found that most of them are related to the immune system, and the risk genes of allergic rhinitis and the risk genes of autoimmune diseases are highly coincident.
The researchers said that the discovery of allergic rhinitis risk genes helps to understand the cause of the disease, but the current discovery of risk genes have a limited interpretation of the cause of the disease, and will further study the interaction between these genes and the environment in the future.
