[Epidemiology of sarcoidosis and its genetic and environmental risk factors].

PURPOSE

Review of the literature on epidemiologic data of sarcoidosis and risk factors.

CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND KEY POINTS

Epidemiological data show that sarcoidosis is a world-wide disease. Frequency is influenced by multiple predisposition factors. The most important are racial factor, sex, age, familial aggregation, genetic factor and/or infective agent. One of these is insufficiency.

FUTURE PROSPECTS AND PROJECTS

Patent sarcoidosis is revealed when concomitant environmental factors (infective agent, climate, country) and predisposition ones (race, sex familial aggregation) appear together and inducing, in each patient, a particular sarcoidosis.