SynthesisThorax2019
Genetic and observational evidence supports a causal role of sex hormones on the development of asthma.
Synthesis in Thorax, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- The disease burden of childhood asthma in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of global health · 2020Pooled it
- Time trend of Brazilian hospital admissions and deaths due to asthma among children and teenagers, 1998-2019.PloS one · 2021Trial
- Genome-wide association study of atopic and autoimmune comorbidities in alopecia areata.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- Increased risk of asthma in female night shift workers.ERJ open research · 2025Article
- Integrated multi-omics profiling reveals shared mechanistic pathways in asthma-allergic rhinitis comorbidity: A hybrid machine learning framework leveraging Mendelian randomization for precision diagnostics.The World Allergy Organization journal · 2025Article
- Sex Hormones and the Risk of Nasal Polyps: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study.World journal of otorhinolaryngology - head and neck surgery · 2025Article
- Genomic Correlations, Shared Loci, and Drug Targets Between Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Asthma: Insights From Genome-wide Association Analysis.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2025Article
- Investigating the Mediating Role of Cardiometabolic Traits in the Causal Link Between SHBG Levels and Stroke Risk via Network Mendelian Randomization.Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Article
- Systemic Hormonal Contraceptive Use and Rhinitis Among Adult Women: An All of Us Database Analysis.Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology · 2025Article
- Combination of androgen and estrogen improves asthma by mediating Runx3 expression.International journal of medical sciences · 2024Article
- Spatial distribution of hospital admissions for asthma in the central area of Asturias, Northern Spain.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Analysis of transcriptional changes in the immune system associated with pubertal development in a longitudinal cohort of children with asthma.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Causal risk factors for asthma in Mendelian randomization studies: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical and translational allergy · 2022Review
- Newborn DNA methylation and asthma acquisition across adolescence and early adulthood.Clinical and experimental allergy : journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2022Article
- Lung Function Variation during the Estrus Cycle of Mares Affected by Severe Asthma.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Asthma, atopy and lung function in young adults after hospitalisation for bronchiolitis in infancy: impact of virus and sex.BMJ open respiratory research · 2022Article
- Sex Disparities in Asthma Development and Clinical Outcomes: Implications for Treatment Strategies.Journal of asthma and allergy · 2022Review
- Genetically predicted sex hormone binding globulin and ischemic heart disease in men and women: a univariable and multivariable Mendelian randomization study.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The impact of obesity on immune function in pediatric asthma.Current opinion in allergy and clinical immunology · 2021Review
- Lung function changes over 8 years and testosterone markers in both sexes: UK Biobank.ERJ open research · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
introductionMales have a higher prevalence of asthma in childhood, whereas females have a higher prevalence in adolescence and adulthood. The 'adolescent switch' observed between sexes during puberty has been hypothesised to be due to fluctuating sex hormones. Robust evidence of the involvement of sex hormones in asthma could lead to development of therapeutic interventions.
methodsWe combine observational evidence using longitudinal data on sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), total and bioavailable testosterone and asthma from a subset of males (n=512) in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, and genetic evidence of SHBG and asthma using two-sample Mendelian randomisation (MR), a method of causal inference. We meta-analysed two-sample MR results across two large data sets, the Trans-National Asthma Genetics Consortium genome-wide association study of asthma and UK Biobank (over 460 000 individuals combined).
resultsObservational evidence indicated weak evidence of a protective effect of increased circulating testosterone on asthma in males in adolescence, but no strong pattern of association with SHBG. Genetic evidence using two-sample MR indicated a protective effect of increased SHBG, with an OR for asthma of 0.86 (95% CI 0.74 to 1.00) for the inverse-variance weighted approach and an OR of 0.83 (95% CI 0.72 to 0.96) for the weighted median estimator, per unit increase in natural log SHBG. A sex-stratified sensitivity analysis suggested the protective effect of SHBG was mostly evident in females.
conclusionWe report the first suggestive evidence of a protective effect of genetically elevated SHBG on asthma, which may provide a biological explanation behind the observed asthma sex discordance. Further work is required to disentangle the downstream effects of SHBG on asthma and the molecular pathways involved.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.