Editorial: Genetics of asthma: the road ahead

Abstract

In recent years, concerted efforts have been made towards understanding the genetic factors of asthma. Asthma is characterized by variable airflow obstruction and hyper-responsiveness of the airways, which is related to chronic airway inflammation and remodelling. Due to its increased prevalence in related individuals, it is considered to have a strong genetic component.1–3 The patterns of asthma inheritance indicate that it is a complex genetic disorder which is not explained by simple mendelian inheritance. Such disorders are multifactorial in origin, and reflect the outcome of many processes linked to each other in a tangled web that is usually poorly understood. Asthma is no exception and this makes the study of genetics of asthma challenging.