Perinatal granulopoiesis and risk of pediatric asthma

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
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Abstract

There are perinatal characteristics, such as gestational age, reproducibly associated with risk for pediatric asthma. Identification of biologic processes influenced by these characteristics could facilitate risk stratification or new therapeutic targets. We hypothesized that transcriptional changes associated with multiple epidemiologic risk factors would be mediators of pediatric asthma risk. Using publicly available transcriptomic data from cord blood mononuclear cells, transcription of genes involved in myeloid differentiation were observed to be inversely associated with a pediatric asthma risk stratification based on multiple perinatal risk factors. This gene signature was validated in an independent prospective cohort and was specifically associated with genes localizing to neutrophil specific granules. Further validation demonstrated that umbilical cord blood serum concentration of PGLYRP-1, a specific granule protein, was inversely associated with mid-childhood current asthma and early-teen FEV₁/FVCx100. Thus, neutrophil specific granule abundance at birth predicts risk for pediatric asthma and pulmonary function in adolescence.

Data availability

Data from RNAseq is available on NCBI Bioproject database PRJNA577955.

The following data sets were generated

(2019) Umbilical Cord Blood Mononuclear Cell mRNAseq: UIH Cohort
NCBI, PRJNA577955.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJNA577955

The following previously published data sets were used

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Article and author information

Author details

Benjamin A Turturice

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

For correspondence
bturtu2@uic.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9382-4612
Juliana Theorell

Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mary Dawn Koenig

Department of Women, Children and Family Health Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Lisa Tussing-Humphreys

Department of Medicine and Cancer Center, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Diane R Gold

Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Augusto A Litonjua

Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester, Rochester, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Emily Oken

Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Life Course, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Sheryl L Rifas-Shiman

Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Life Course, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
David L Perkins

Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

For correspondence
perkinsd@uic.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Patricia W Finn

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Medicine, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, United States

For correspondence
pwfinn@uic.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (F30HL136001)

Benjamin A Turturice

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI053878)

Patricia W Finn

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD034568)

Emily Oken

National Institutes of Health (UH3OD023286)

Emily Oken

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Nurse Faculty Scholars Program #72117)

Mary Dawn Koenig

University of Illinois at Chicago (College of Nursing Dean's Award)

Mary Dawn Koenig

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: The current study was approved by the University of Illinois at Chicago IRB, 20160326 and 20150353, and the IRB of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.