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Asthma and atopy are related conditions that may share similar genetic susceptibility. Linkage studies have identified a region on chromosome 5q that contains biologic candidates for both asthma and atopy phenotypes, including several proinflammatory cytokines. Interleukin (IL)-13, one of the candidate genes in the region, is directly involved in the regulation of immunoglobulin E and has been associated with both asthma and atopy. We sought to identify new polymorphisms in the IL-13 gene, and evaluated the involvement of a subset of these variants in asthma and atopy in a case-control study using probands and spouses from a Dutch asthma family study. IL-13 was sequenced in 20 probands and 20 unaffected spouses, and 10 polymorphisms were identified, four novel and six previously reported. Three single nucleotide (nt) polymorphisms (SNPs) were detected in the 5 ′ -promoter region, two in …