Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA.
Epigenomics. 2012 Aug;4(4):415-29. doi: 10.2217/epi.12.32.
Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood, affecting one in eight children in the USA and worldwide. It is a complex disease, influenced by both environmental exposures and genetic factors. Although epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation, histone modification and miRNA) can affect transcriptional activity in multiple genetic pathways relevant for asthma development, very limited work has been carried out so far to examine the role of epigenetic variations on asthma development and management. This review provides a brief overview of epigenetic modifications, summarizes recent findings, and discusses some of the major methodological concerns that are relevant for asthma epigenetics.
哮喘是儿童最常见的慢性疾病，影响美国和全球每八个儿童中的一个。它是一种复杂的疾病，受到环境暴露和遗传因素的影响。尽管表观遗传修饰（DNA 甲基化、组蛋白修饰和 miRNA）可以影响与哮喘发展相关的多个遗传途径中的转录活性，但迄今为止，关于表观遗传变异在哮喘发展和管理中的作用的研究非常有限。本文简要概述了表观遗传修饰，总结了最近的发现，并讨论了一些与哮喘表观遗传学相关的主要方法学问题。
