Autophagy is a cellular process directed at eliminating or recycling cellular proteins. Recently, the autophagy pathway has been implicated in immune dysfunction, the pathogenesis of inflammatory disorders, and response to viral infection. Associations between two genes in the autophagy pathway, ATG5 and ATG7, with childhood asthma were investigated. Using genetic and experimental approaches, we examined the association of 13 HapMap-derived tagging SNPs in ATG5 and ATG7 with childhood asthma in 312 asthmatic and 246 non-allergic control children. We confirmed our findings by using independent cohorts and imputation analysis. Finally, we evaluated the functional relevance of a disease associated SNP. We demonstrated that ATG5 single nucleotide polymorphisms rs12201458 and rs510432 were associated with asthma (p = 0.00085 and 0.0025, respectively). In three independent cohorts, additional variants in ATG5 in the same LD block were associated with asthma (p<0.05). We found that rs510432 was functionally relevant and conferred significantly increased promotor activity. Furthermore, Atg5 expression was increased in nasal epithelium of acute asthmatics compared to stable asthmatics and non-asthmatic controls. Genetic variants in ATG5, including a functional promotor variant, are associated with childhood asthma. These results provide novel evidence for a role for ATG5 in childhood asthma.

Cervicovaginal human papillomavirus (HPV) viral load has been purported as a potential marker for the detection of high‐grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia or cancer (≥CIN2). To examine disease association with type‐specific viral load for the full‐range of anogenital HPV infections, we conducted cross‐sectional and prospective analyses of ∼2,000 HPV‐infected women from a 10,000‐woman population‐based study in Guanacaste, Costa Rica with 7 years of follow‐up. Cervical specimens were tested for >40 HPV types using a MY09/MY11 L1 consensus primer PCR method with type‐specific dot blot hybridization and PCR signal intensity as a measure of viral load. A positive association was observed between prevalent ≥CIN2 and high viral load compared to low viral load for women with baseline single HPV16 infections (OR = 19.2, 95% CI = 4.4–83.2) and single non‐16 carcinogenic infections (OR = 9.2, 95% CI = 2.1–39.9). Inclusion of women with multiple HPV types did not substantially change these associations. In prospective follow‐up, only women infected with HPV16 alone (OR = 27.2, 95% = 3.5–213.5) had a strong association between high viral load and incident ≥CIN2; non‐16 carcinogenic high viral load was not associated with incident ≥CIN2 (OR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.2–1.9). Single noncarcinogenic type viral load was not associated with increased risk of prevalent or incident ≥CIN2 (OR = 1.2 and 1.1, respectively). In conclusion, carcinogenic high viral load was associated with prevalent ≥CIN2; however HPV16 was uniquely associated with incident ≥CIN2. The extent to which these observations can be translated into clinical practice must be rigorously examined in the context of the method of viral load measurement and the type‐specific differences observed for incident ≥CIN2.

Persistent cervical infections with carcinogenic human papillomaviruses (HPV) cause virtually all cervical cancer. Cytologic abnormalities are the manifestations of HPV infections used to identify women at risk. To compare the potential of the full range of anogenital HPV genotypes to induce cytopathic effects, we examined the influences of HPV type, viral load, and age on cytopathology among 1,222 women having a single HPV type at enrollment into a 10,000-woman population-based study in Costa Rica. Cervical specimens were tested for ∼40 HPV types by MY09/MY11 L1 primer PCR and type-specific dot blot hybridization. Types were organized by phylogenetic species and cancer risk. PCR signal strength served as a qualitative surrogate for viral load. Overall, 24.8% [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 22.4-27.3] of single prevalent HPV infections had concurrent abnormalities (atypical squamous cells or worse) ranging from 0.0% to 80.0% based on HPV type. Noncarcinogenic α3/α15 types, although highly prevalent, uncommonly caused cytologic abnormalities (13.1%; 95% CI, 9.8-17.0). In contrast, one quarter to nearly one half of infections with a single major carcinogenic species type (α9/α11/α7/α5/α6) produced abnormalities. Greater abnormalities were observed with increasing qualitative viral load of carcinogenic types; fewer abnormalities were observed among older women (>54 years). A high percentage (46.2%) of detected abnormalities in women infected with HPV16 or related α9 types were high grade or worse, consistent with strong carcinogenicity, compared with 10.7% in women infected with α7 types, including HPV18, a major cause of adenocarcinoma. The lack of evident severe abnormalities associated with HPV18 and related HPV types might have implications for screening for poorly detected glandular and α7-related lesions. (Cancer Res 2006; 66(20): 10112-9)