Study populations
Subjects included in this study were from long-term follow-up studies in
the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). This study consists of
two sources of subjects, 1) subjects from the third visit (2013-2014) of
a longitudinal study described previously by Carpaij et
al 4, and 2) additional asthma remission subjects that
were followed up from previous genetic studies11 and
were re-invited in 2013-2014 to take nasal brushes and blood samples,
during which the remission status was assessed again. The participants
included in this cohort were different from those of the cohort
described by Vermeulen et al 10 from our
research institute. All participants were diagnosed with asthma at
baseline with a doctor diagnosis of asthma and AHR. Then, subjects had
at least one follow-up measurement in which their asthma status was
evaluated by questionnaires and in most patients additionally with
spirometry and an AHR test5. The medical ethical board
of the UMCG approved the studies and all participants gave written
informed consent.
We replicated findings in whole blood in two independent cohorts: the
Lifelines population-based cohort in The Netherlands (where we could
replicate our results on ClinR using Illumina 450 K array) and the
Epidemiological study on the Genetics and Environment of Asthma (EGEA)
cohort in France, a case control and family study on asthma, where we
could replicate our results on ClinR and ComR with methylC-capture
sequencing12. No cohort was available to replicate our
nasal findings. Extensive information on these cohorts is described in
the supplemental materials.