# Genetic ancestry differences in IgE- mediated peanut allergy in African Americans

> **NIH NIH R21** · CINCINNATI CHILDRENS HOSP MED CTR · 2021 · $198,750

## Abstract

Abstract
The burden of food allergy (FA) is disproportionately high among minority children, in particular the prevalence
of FA is 4 times higher in African American (AA) than European American (EA) children. Peanut allergy (PA) is
the most common and serious form of FA. As in FA in general, PA exhibits the same racial disparity between AA
and EA. Although there is a general consensus about the role of genetic ancestry in PA risk, the extent to which
ancestry contributes or explains racial disparities remains largely unknown. Our long-term goal is to determine
genetic ancestry determinants that contribute to total and peanut specific IgE disparities in admixed AA children.
Our overall objective is to determine to what extent peanut specific IgE risk is determined by genetic ancestry in
AA admixed individuals with varying African ancestry proportion. Our well-phenotyped PA cohorts with collected
DNA samples, and high-density genome-wide Multi-Ethnic Global Array (MEGA) that contains SNP sets tailored
towards admixed ancestry presents a unique opportunity to identify ancestry-specific PA risk variants. We
hypothesize that genetic variants with large allele frequency differences between African and European ancestry
population may be partly responsible for the current difference in PA risk. Two Specific Aims are proposed to
test our hypothesis and achieve our proposed plan: Aim 1) Determine the genetic ancestry and conduct
admixture mapping using multi-ethnic genotyping array; and Aim 2) Replicate the most promising variants in AM
peak regions using independent replication cohorts. The proposed study is highly significant (given the high
burden of PA among AA children) and highly innovative (it is the first admixture analysis) to unravel genetic
ancestry-specific risk variants associated with PA. Most importantly, the results will be on minority population
and will contribute to our knowledge and to the early prediction, diagnosis and treatment of PA—a road map
towards precision diagnosis. We therefore believe that this study along with future studies will uncover fundamental
information about whether genetic ancestry can affect PA risk and prediction, thereby reducing the burden of PA
on patients and their families and improving their quality of life.
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## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10317528
- **Project number:** 1R21AI157363-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** CINCINNATI CHILDRENS HOSP MED CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Amal Halim Assa'ad
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $198,750
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10317528

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10317528, Genetic ancestry differences in IgE- mediated peanut allergy in African Americans (1R21AI157363-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10317528. Licensed CC0.

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