Inheritance of asthma in families and its linkage to HLA haplotypes.

Four families in which asthma occurred in more than three members, and in which there were at least three children, were studied in terms of clinical symptoms, serum IgE levels determined by RIST and RAST, and HLA haplotypes. No association between clinical asthma and serum IgE level was found, but a close association between asthma and a particular HLA haplotype in a family was demonstrated. It was therefore postulated that a disease susceptibility gene closely linked to an HLA gene complex may play a role in the development of asthma.