Is asthma hereditary?

Is asthma hereditary?

William Berger (Allergist and Immunologist) gives expert video advice on: How do I know if I have asthma?; Is asthma hereditary? and more...

In many cases, we find that asthma does run in families and in what we refer to as a hereditary disease. Asthma very often is associated in families where there are other allergic problems, people who have nasal allergies or eye allergies, break out in hives, or have severe eczema. There is not a specific genetic predisposition, in that if your mother has asthma you will definitely have it or if your father has it you'll definitely have it, but in general we find that in allergic diseases such as asthma, if you have one parent who has it you have about a fifty percent chance; if you have two parents you have about a seventy-five percent chance. So, as a result, we always get a family history when we're doing a diagnostic workup for asthma and other allergic diseases.