Study groups

The study population included 122 individuals (80 females; aged 20 to 70 years). In this group, 82 patients (54 females; aged 23 to 69 years) had the diagnosis of asthma established according to the Global Initiative for Asthma recommendations (GINA) [14]. The control group consisted of 40 healthy participants (26 females; aged 20 to 70 years) with neither allergy nor chronic pulmonary dysfunction in the medical history. After genotyping (del18 genotype at -2549 -2567 position in the promoter of the VEGF gene), all participants were divided into two cohorts: del (no mutation – genetic variant del/del) and ins (mutation – genetic variants ins/ins or ins/del). The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee at the Wroclaw Medical University, Poland. The demographic characteristics are shown in Table 1.

The study population data

SD – standard deviation, min.; max. – minimum, maximum, del/ins – deletion/insertion.