Published ahead of print on September 14, 2006, doi:10.1164/rccm.200605-596OC
© 2006 American Thoracic Society doi: 10.1164/rccm.200605-596OC
Ancestry–Environment Interactions and Asthma Risk among Puerto RicansUniversity of California, San Francisco, San Francisco; Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California; San Juan VAMC, University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, San Juan; Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico; Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, School of Dental and Oral Surgery, Columbia University, New York, New York; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington; and Division of Allergy-Immunology, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Esteban González Burchard, M.D., UCSF/Lung Biology Center, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-2911. E-mail: esteban{at}sfgh.ucsf.edu Background: Puerto Ricans, an admixed population of African, European, and Native American ancestries, have the highest asthma prevalence, morbidity, and mortality rates of any United States' population. Although socioeconomic status (SES) is negatively correlated with asthma incidence in most populations, no such relationship has been identified among Puerto Ricans. We hypothesized that, in this admixed population, the association between SES and asthma may interact with genetic ancestry. Methods: We analyzed 135 Puerto Rican subjects with asthma and 156 control subjects recruited from six different recruitment centers in Puerto Rico. Individual ancestry for each subject was estimated using 44 ancestry informative markers. SES was assigned using the census tracts' median family income. Analyses of SES were based on the SES of the clinic site from which the subjects were recruited and on a subset of individuals on whom home address–based SES was available. Results: In the two (independent) analyses, we found a significant interaction between SES, ancestry, and asthma disease status. At lower SES, European ancestry was associated with increased risk of asthma, whereas African ancestry was associated with decreased risk. The opposite was true for their higher SES counterparts. Conclusions: The observed interaction may help to explain the unique pattern of risk for asthma in Puerto Ricans and the lack of association with SES observed in previous studies when not accounting for varying proportions of ancestry.
Key Words: Latino • asthma • admixture • gene-environment • socioeconomic status
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