Worldwide search for asthma clue

[Rachel]

An interesting article on a few things related to asthma: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7766656.stm

What do you guys think?

Being asthmatic myself these things always interest me.

Edit: "By analysing the islanders' genes Dr Zamel achieved what would have been impossible with any other population - the isolation of one particular gene - known as ESE3. "

Interestingly searching for ESE3 in pubmed you only get 7 results, none of which are obviously to do with asthma. to confirm i added asthma to the search and got no results. Also a search for the author mentioned shows that he hasn't published anything since 2004!

This half reminds me of something i read the other day:

from: http://stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?aid=147
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media

and in this case i see no evidence of peer reviewed journals on the subject! (either that or they're badly written as that they don't come up when i searched)

[Pudding]

Island populations (and other isolated groups) can definitely be helpful in determining genetic markers for disease, but the lack of published material on that gene and asthma is very interesting.

I think that gene therapy could be very helpful with this sort of thing down the road, but environmental factors are probably more responsible for the explosion in asthma diagnosis and should be addressed.

(That, and I think athletics has something to do with the high rate of diagnosis. Asthma medications are generally allowed in competitions, and many athletes at all levels will do a lot to get an advantage. I find it interesting that 20+% of Olympic athletes supposedly have asthma.)

[Asthaloth]

My money is on either Fake, or she is on the stargate program and is publishing under a pseudo name / been unavailable on Atlantis for several years.

Alas, I fear fake.