Race and ethnicity: Poor proxies for genetics.
详细信息
文摘
For medical purposes, reliance on patient self-identification of race and ethnicity is suboptimal, particularly when an individual's group affiliation and genetics are inconcordant. Statistical approaches are more accurate for unimodal populations (European Americans) because individuals tend to cluster around the median. However, African Americans and Hispanic Americans are bimodal and trimodal populations. Both groups have widely varied admixture ratios of genetic contributions from ancestral parental groups. Therefore, because there is a greater likelihood that any patient of admixed ancestry lies far from the group median, characterization of disease risks and carrier rates for admixed individuals is inherently risky.;Interviews with genetic counselors elicited definitions of race and ethnicity and uses of these terms in practice. Although ethnicity was tightly defined there was disagreement and vagueness concerning race. Genetic analysis of ethnically mixed individuals prompted appropriate responses, whereas consideration of racially mixed individuals evoked significantly less clarity about genetic exigencies.