Genetic predisposition to pneumonia

Aims: To describe the role of genetics in the occurrence and severity of pneumonia. Material and methods: Assessment of evidence based on the identification of relevant studies in PubMed database. Articles published in English responding to the following keywords were selected: pneumonia, genetic, genome, polymorphism, mutation, transcriptome and intensive care unit. Results: The analysis of available data showed an effect of specific genes on the occurrence and severity of pneumonia. The selected approaches were focused either on a single gene or the whole genome. Limitations of the two approaches were discussed. The intermediate positioning of transcriptome analysis was also discussed. Conclusion: Advances in technology made possible investigation of new researches, underlining the role of specific genes in the pulmonary infection. In contrast, these studies clearly showed the weight of environment and comorbidities in the natural course of pneumonia.