ORIGINAL ARTICLE No association between asthma or allergy and the

Aims: To investigate whether the presence of the CCR5∆32 allele was associated with atopy or asthma. Methods: A total of 118 children with asthma, 145 children with non-asthmatic, but allergic pheno-type, and 303 children without allergic or asthmatic disorders were studied. Results: There were no significant differences in the frequency of CCR5∆32, or in the distributions of genotypes between the groups. The relative eosinophil blood count was slightly lower in patients with heterozygous genotype, than in patients with wild type genotype. Conclusion: No association was found between the susceptibility of allergy or asthma and the func-tional deficient CCR5∆32 allele. Asthma is a pulmonary disease characterised by increasedbronchial responsiveness to a variety of stimuli. Chemo-tactic cytokines, or chemokines, are small signalling proteins which are deeply involved in the physiology and pathophysiology of acute and chronic inflammatory processes, by attracting and stimulating specific subsets of leukocytes. Several studies have shown that chemokines and their recep-tors are implicated in asthma.