Genetic epidemiology of alpha‐1 antitrypsin deficiency in southern Europe: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AAT deficiency) is one of the most common serious hereditary disorders in the world because it affects all major racial subgroups worldwide and there are at least 120.5 million carriers and deficient subjects worldwide. This genetic disease is related to a high risk for development of jaundice in infants, liver disease in children and adults, and pulmonary emphysema in adults. Moreover, AAT-deficiency carrier phenotypes (PiMS and PiMZ) and deficiency-allele phenotypes (PiSS, PiSZ, and PiZZ) are suspected to make subjects susceptible to a variety of other adverse health effects. As there is a limited database on the number of individuals affected by this disease worldwide, the authors of the present report collected data on control cohorts in genetic epidemiological studies published in the peer-reviewed literature worldwide. The data collected were used to estimate the numbers of carriers and deficiency-allele combinations for the two most common defective alleles, namely PiS and PiZ, in over 58 countries worldwide. The present report focuses on the distribution of the PiS and PiZ deficiency alleles in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The total number of individuals at risk for adverse health effects were as follows: 9, 101, 739 in France; 4, 289, 566 in Italy; 2, 659, 241 in Portugal; and 8, 903, 773 in Spain. The geographical distribution of individual control cohorts and estimates of the numbers of carriers and deficiency-allele phenotypes in each of these four southern European countries are shown in individual tables and maps. This report will be followed by other reports on the remaining countries in Europe, as well as worldwide.

Alpha1-antitrypsin heterozygosity plays a positive role in attainment of longevity

“…These results are not due to bias in allele frequencies assessment in our population since the frequencies of healthy controls are close to those expected from literature data. In Caucasoids the most common alleles are the M variants with allele frequencies of greater than 0.95, the Z variant occurring with a frequency of 0.01-0.03 (de Serres et al 2003;Lomas and Parfrey 2004). So, according to Danish data, our results support a protective role for Z allele in CVD.…”

Estimating the Risk for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency among COPD Patients: Evidence Supporting Targeted Screening

“…To assess the statistical reliability of the COPD and non-COPD cohorts in the surveys for each country, a Precision Factor Score (PF Score) with a scale of 1 to 12 was developed by one of us (EF Bustillo), as described in an earlier publication (7,30). Since PF Score is inversely proportional to the values of the coefficient of variation (cv), which measures the dispersion of values in respect to the mean, the smaller value of cv the greater the value of the PF Score.…”

Ongoing research in Europe: Alpha One International Registry (AIR) objectives and development

“…Furthermore, the PI*SZ and rare genotypes are eight-and three-fold higher in AIR, respectively. This might reflect the different epidemiology of S and rare a 1 -ATD variants in the European countries [2,5,6,10,11] or different inclusion criteria.…”