The Heterogeneity of Asthma Phenotypes in Children and Young Adults

Objective. Genetic heterogeneity and risk factor distribution was analyzed in two previously proposed asthma phenotypes. Method. A sample of 412 subjects was investigated at 7-8, 12-13, and 21-22 years of age with questionnaires, skin prick tests, and genetic analysis of IL-4 receptor (IL4R) single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The sample was subdivided in one group with no asthma, and two groups with asthma separated by age of onset of symptoms, namely, early onset asthma (EOA) and late onset asthma (LOA). Risk factors and IL4R markers were analyzed in respect to asthma phenotypes. Results. EOA and LOA groups were both associated with atopy and a maternal history of asthma. Female gender was more common in LOA, whereas childhood eczema, frequent colds in infancy, and a paternal history of asthma were more common in EOA. The AA genotype of rs2057768 and the GG genotype of rs1805010 were more common in LOA, whereas the GG genotype of rs2107356 was less common in EOA. Conclusion. Our data suggest that early and late onset asthma may be of different endotypes and genotypes

W+jets Matrix Elements and the Dipole Cascade

We extend the algorithm for matching fixed-order tree-level matrix element generators with the Dipole Cascade Model in Ariadne to apply to processes with incoming hadrons. We test the algoritm on for the process W+n jets at the Tevatron, and find that the results are fairly insensitive to the cutoff used to regularize the soft and collinear divergencies in the tree-level matrix elements. We also investigate a few observables to check the sensitivity to the matrix element correction