Åsa Torinsson Naluai

Institution/Department: Institute of Biomedicine
Previous studies: University of Gothenburg
Thesis: The genetic complexity of celiac disease
Research areas: The genetics of common diseases and inflammatory ­responses
Current research: Coeliac disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory disease. Genetic factors, together with gluten from wheat and most likely other ­environmental factors, are involved in disease development. The disease is more widespread than previously thought and recent data suggests that 1-3 % of the Swedish population is intolerant to gluten. In the 1990s, there were more new CD cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Sweden than anywhere else in the world. Even so, more than 70% of affected children in Sweden remain undiagnosed. Ongoing CD will increase the overall risk for developing other autoimmune diseases as well as developing neurological manifestations and malnutrition. We have analyzed all of the eight loci identified from the Genome Wide Association Study in CD and its follow up study. When genotyping our Scandinavian family material, consisting of 325 nuclear families, we were able to confirm two of these loci, the IL2/IL21 region (chromosome 4) as well as the CCR cluster region (chromosome 3). We have made a haplotype analysis as a first step in order to identify variation and confine the region which might ­contain the disease variant. We have also made a whole genome linkage analysis and identified a disease locus on chromosome 5.

E-mail address: asa@genomics.sahlgrenska.gu.se