the background, we found a significant 2.2-fold enrichment (9.4%; hypergeometric P = 0.008) of our 117 candidate genes listed in the HuGE database as asthma putative candidate genes (the 11 genes listed were: PTGER4, MUC1, IL10RA, TNFRSF25, TNFSF10, CD3E, MST1, CXCL13, GNLY, CNOT6L, GRK4). Interestingly, if we were to consider the larger set of 193 genes associated with lymphocyte counts, the enrichment of genes also listed in the HuGE database as previously evaluated for genetic associations with asthma is even more pronounced (12.4%, or nearly a 3.1-fold enrichment; hypergeometric P = 1.0 × 10−6). While some of these annotations will not ultimately prove to be true positive associations, these observations of enrichment in our candidate gene set provides further support for the role of these genes in asthma susceptibility. In addition, this observation provides further support for our overall approach, as it indicates that we uncovered a set of likely asthma candidate genes.
