Annette Haagerup, Torbjørn Bjerke, Peter Oluf Schiøtz, Ronald Dahl, Helle Glud Binderup, Qihua Tan, Torben Arvid Kruse
DOI: 10.1080/00015550410034426

Atopicdermatitis is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood andclosely related to other clinical manifestations of allergy. Theincidence is high and still increasing. The genetic contribution todisease development is substantial and complex. Only recently geneticresearch has begun to focus on this phenotype, and specificsusceptibility genes remain to be found. To identify candidate regionsholding genes for atopic dermatitis we performed a genome-scan inDanish affected sib-pair families containing sib-pairs matching aphenotype definition of both clinical atopic dermatitis and confirmedspecific allergy. The scan was undertaken using 446 microsatellitemarkers and non-parametric linkage results were obtained from theMAPMAKER/SIBS computer program. We found evidence of linkage to threecandidate regions in chromosomes 3p (MLS=2.14), 4p (MLS=2.00) and 18q(MLS=2.25), one of which has not been reported previously. Eightadditional regions showed weaker but positive results.