With the aid of complex but very definite methods, the geneticists located, on several chromosomes, places which control the production of the allergic antibodies (or lgE), the importance of bronchial hyperreactivity and of other symptoms of asthma.

This family predisposition in asthma is known for a long time: the children born in parents attained by asthma or by allergies develop these affections more often than the children without such antecedents. But, to develop an asthma, environment also has to be favourable: individual genetically programmed to develop an asthma by allergy in the pollens of olive tree will not make asthma in Norway, because there are not olive trees in this country also, asthma is rare in the countries cold and dry climate of which opposes to the development of the dust mites.

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