Background: Eosinophils are granulocytic white blood cells implicated in asthma and atopic disease. The degree of eosinophilia in the blood of patients with asthma correlates with the severity of asthmatic symptoms. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) linkage analysis of eosinophil count may be a more powerful strategy of mapping genes involved in asthma than linkage analysis using affected relative pairs.
Objective: To identify QTLs responsible for variation in eosinophil count in adolescent twins.
Methods: We measured eosinophil count longitudinally in 738 pairs of twins at 12, 14, and 16 years of age. We typed 757 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers at an average spacing of approximately 5 centimorgans across the genome. We then used multipoint variance components linkage analysis to test for linkage between marker loci and eosinophil concentrations at each age across the genome.
Results: We found highly significant linkage on chromosome 2q33 in 12-year-old twins (logarithm of the odds=4.6; P=.000002) and suggestive evidence of linkage in the same region in 14-year-olds (logarithm of the odds=1.0; P=.016). We also found suggestive evidence of linkage at other areas of the genome, including regions on chromosomes 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 20, and 22.
Conclusion: A QTL for eosinophil count is present on chromosome 2q33. This QTL might represent a gene involved in asthma pathophysiology.