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The “atopic march” hypothesis predicts that persons with eczema will eventually develop hay fever (allergic rhinitis) and asthma. The three conditions are associated, and concordance in family members is common. Are there really causal relationships among eczema, hay fever, and asthma, or are the associations explained by overlapping familial or genetic causes?
Investigators mined the Tasmania Longitudinal Health Study database to study the relationship of a predictor to outcome. They used a novel regression approach in families of patients whose infantile eczema was affirmed by questionnaire. Each proband was matched to his or her closest sibling in age (maximum age difference, 2 years), resulting in 3778 pairs. Identical twins were exclude…