Asthma, Rhinitis, Other Respiratory DiseasesThe development of asthma in children infected with Chlamydia pneumoniae is dependent on the modifying effect of mannose-binding lectin☆
Section snippets
Subjects
One hundred thirty-nine asthmatic children (79 boys and 60 girls; age range, 3-18 years; mean age, 10.5 years [SD 4.1]) and 174 healthy children (95 boys and 79 girls; age range, 3-18 years; mean age, 11.5 years [SD 3.9]) were enrolled in the study. All patients were from Budapest.
The asthmatic children attended the Allergic Outpatient Consultation of the Budai Children's Hospital. All the asthmatic children had specialist-diagnosed asthma with the following characteristics: (1) recurrent
Results
Table II shows the number and percentage of children with positive results for C pneumoniae–specific antibodies in the 2 groups. There were no significant differences in the proportion of patients with positive results for any C pneumoniae–specific antibodies between asthmatic and control children. Furthermore, there were no differences between sexes in the infection status in any groups of children (data not shown).
By definition, IgG positivity indicates that the probands have had C pneumoniae
Discussion
This study supports the association between C pneumoniae infection and asthma; however, the association was dependent on variation in the MBL gene. Significantly increased risk for development of asthma was seen in infected children who carried at least one variant MBL allele. However, this association was restricted to children with past C pneumoniae infection (positive for IgG). Furthermore, infected children with variant MBL alleles were found to have considerably higher risk of development
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Supported by OTKA (National Scientific Research Fund): T032349 and T031887; Hungarian Ministry of Welfare: ETT 134/2001 and 300/2000; and a János Bolyai Research Grant.