It is of course likely that only a subset of these 117 genes is involved in asthma pathogenesis for some of the same reasons detailed above. However, disentangling the contribution of any one gene is difficult and will require additional efforts, including functional assays, which are beyond the scope of the current study. An initial step in further characterizing the regulation of these candidate genes would be to profile their expression pattern in peripheral blood samples from asthmatics and healthy controls.
