VATIS UPDATE Article

Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Centre for Heart Lung Innovation, Canada, University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, Canada, and McGill University, Canada, have have pinpointed a new gene associated with peanut allergy, offering further evidence that genes play a role in the development of food allergies and opening the door to future research, improved diagnostics and new treatment options.

The gene, called c11orf30/EMSY (EMSY), is already known to play a role in other allergy-related conditions, such as eczema, asthma, and allergic rhinitis. This study is the first to associate the EMSY locus with food allergy, and these findings suggest that the gene plays an important role in the development of not just food allergy but also general allergic predisposition. The findings have been published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

For the study, the researchers analyzed DNA from 850 individuals with a peanut allergy recruited from the Canadian Peanut Allergy Registry (CanPAR) and nearly 1,000 individuals without a peanut allergy. The team scanned over 7.5 million genetic markers across the DNA through a genome-wide association study (GWAS) searching for clues as to which genes might contribute to an increased risk of developing food allergies.