• Supinda Bunyavanich, Judy L Silberg, Jessica Lasky-Su, Nathan A Gillespie, Nancy E Lange, Glorisa Canino, and Juan C Celedón.
• Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America. supinda@post.harvard.edu
• Plos One. 2013 Jan 1; 8 (7): e68473.

BackgroundThe relative contributions of genetics and environment to asthma in Hispanics or to asthma in children younger than 3 years are not well understood.ObjectiveTo examine the relative contributions of genetics and environment to early-childhood asthma by performing a longitudinal twin study of asthma in Puerto Rican children ≤ 3 years old.Methods678 twin infants from the Puerto Rico Neo-Natal Twin Registry were assessed for asthma at age 1 year, with follow-up data obtained for 624 twins at age 3 years. Zygosity was determined by DNA microsatellite profiling. Structural equation modeling was performed for three phenotypes at ages 1 and 3 years: physician-diagnosed asthma, asthma medication use in the past year, and ≥ 1 hospitalization for asthma in the past year. Models were additionally adjusted for early-life environmental tobacco smoke exposure, sex, and age.ResultsThe prevalences of physician-diagnosed asthma, asthma medication use, and hospitalization for asthma were 11.6%, 10.8%, 4.9% at age 1 year, and 34.1%, 40.1%, and 8.5% at 3 years, respectively. Shared environmental effects contributed to the majority of variance in susceptibility to physician-diagnosed asthma and asthma medication use in the first year of life (84%-86%), while genetic effects drove variance in all phenotypes (45%-65%) at age 3 years. Early-life environmental tobacco smoke, sex, and age contributed to variance in susceptibility.ConclusionOur longitudinal study in Puerto Rican twins demonstrates a changing contribution of shared environmental effects to liability for physician-diagnosed asthma and asthma medication use between ages 1 and 3 years. Early-life environmental tobacco smoke reduction could markedly reduce asthma morbidity in young Puerto Rican children.

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