Epigenetic changes in B lymphocytes associated with house dust mite allergic asthma.

The increase in atopic diseases has occurred in such a short period of time that it becomes difficult to be attributed only to genetic factors, which usually need more prolonged time periods to manifest. In this setting during the last decade, the science of epigenetics has increasingly developed offering new perspectives and opening a new challenging research area. In this study we aimed to study the epigenetic patterns in B CD19+ Lymphocytes from healthy and allergic patients using the improved version of HELP assay. Our study focused specifically on DNA methylation in B CD19+ Lymphocytes isolated from whole blood of dust allergic patients (ALLERGY, n=3), aspirin intolerants (ASPIRIN INTOLERANT, n=3) and healthy subjects (CONTROL, n=3). We utilized a two-stage design involving genome-wide discovery followed by quantitative, single-locus validation. Each microarray consists of a two-color comparison of a methylation-sensitive representation of the genome (HpaII) with an internal methylation-insensitive control/reference (MspI).