Asthma and hypertension are complex diseases coinciding more frequently than expected by chance. Unraveling the mechanisms of comorbidity of asthma and hypertension is necessary for choosing the most appropriate treatment plan for patients with this comorbidity. Since both diseases have a strong genetic component in this article we aimed to find and study genes simultaneously associated with asthma and hypertension. We identified 330 shared genes and found that they form six modules on the interaction network. A strong overlap between genes associated with asthma and hypertension was found on the level of eQTL regulated genes and between targets of drugs relevant for asthma and hypertension. This suggests that the phenomenon of comorbidity of asthma and hypertension may be explained by altered genetic regulation or result from drug side effects. In this work we also demonstrate that not only drug indications but also contraindications provide an important source of molecular evidence helpful to uncover disease mechanisms. These findings give a clue to the possible mechanisms of comorbidity and highlight the direction for future research.

Comorbidity, a co-incidence of several disorders in an individual, is a common phenomenon. Their development is governed by multiple factors, including genetic variation. The current study was set up to look at associations between isolated and comorbid diseases of bronchial asthma and hypertension, on one hand, and single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with regulation of gene expression (eQTL), on the other hand. A total of 96 eQTL SNPs were genotyped in 587 Russian individuals. Bronchial asthma alone was found to be associated with rs1927914 (TLR4), rs1928298 (intergenic variant), and rs1980616 (SERPINA1); hypertension alone was found to be associated with rs11065987 (intergenic variant); rs2284033 (IL2RB), rs11191582 (NT5C2), and rs11669386 (CARD8); comorbidity between asthma and hypertension was found to be associated with rs1010461 (ANG/RNASE4), rs7038716, rs7026297 (LOC105376244), rs7025144 (intergenic variant), and rs2022318 (intergenic variant). The results suggest that genetic background of comorbidity of asthma and hypertension is different from genetic backgrounds of both diseases manifesting isolated.

Objective. To assess the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms of genes potentially involved in the comorbidity of bronchial asthma (BA) and essential hypertension (HTN) in patients with different time onset of the diseases.Design and methods. Genotyping of 92 SNPs was performed using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in patients with BA and HTN (n = 97) and healthy individuals (n = 153). The group of patients with comorbid pathology was divided into two subgroups depending on the time of onset of symptoms of BA relative to HTN, and the prevalence of all studied SNPs was compared in each subgroup relative to the control.Results. The variant rs11590807 regulating expression for UTP25, TRAF3IP3, C1orf74, HSD11B1-AS 1, IRF6 genes in the heart, blood vessels, and lung is associated with BA and HTN, regardless of the time onset of each of these diseases. Associations of other variants are specific with respect for each subgroup of comorbid diseases. The rs1010461 variant, which regulates the expression of RNASE4 and ANG genes, is linked with HTN as the first phenotype of the comorbidity. The rs769214, rs11032700, rs11032699, rs484214, and rs480575 variants, which regulate the expression of CAT gene, are associated with BA as the first phenotype of disease comorbidity.Conclusions. We found specific associations of the studied polymorphic variants in the development of comorbid phenotypes of BA and HTN, which differ in the time of manifestation of each of the diseases relative to each other.

The study aimed to search for mutations in the ATP7B gene using massively parallel sequencing in patients with Wilson disease in the Tomsk region. For 42 patients with suspected Wilson’s disease (aged from 1 to 33 years) was performed molecular genetic analysis. Enrichment of the interest genome regions was carried out by the long-range PCR. DNA libraries with ligated adapters were constructed with Nextera DNA Flex (Illumina, USA) kit. Sequencing was performed on the Illumina MiSeq platform (Illumina, USA). As a result of this work, we identified 9 pathogenic genetic variants. All variants were previously described in the literature and were found in patients with Wilson’s disease. Five missense mutations, one splice site mutation, and 3 frameshift mutations were identified. In patients with Wilson’s disease in the Tomsk region, the most common variant was c.3207C>A, this variant is the most common both in the Russian Federation and in other European populations. Also, a pathogenic variant c.3036dupC was found, which is probably endemic to the Russian Federation.