Ethnic origin and genetic ancestry, what place do they have in medical practice in Argentina?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24215/18536387e020Keywords:
ethnicity, population genomics, precision medicineAbstract
Increasingly, biomedical research is looking at the genetic ancestry of populations with a view to its potential
applications in health prevention, as well as in the treatment of population-specific diseases. The objective of
this work was to investigate the training in genetics at graduate and postgraduate levels of physicians in the country, and relate it to the way of approaching concepts of population medical genetics in clinical practice. A semi-structured survey was made for professionals from Argentina. The survey was distributed to institutions of physicians of all the provinces, such as associations, schools, hospitals, forums, etc. 544 answers were gathered. 78.5% of respondents received genetics-related content in their university syllabus, this
percentage being higher among young professionals. 98.5% inquire about hereditary/genetic aspects related to the disease, while 64.5% inquire about the ethnic origin. Of this group, 6.2% rely on external physical features (for example, skin color), and/or surname and/or accent to assign an ethnic origin. Those who have postgraduate training in genetics ask about the population origin of the patient to a greater extent than those who do not have this training. There is no unified criterion on how to register ancestry, geographic origin or ethnicity in medical practice. This may be due to a low relative importance attributed to these variables, from the academic training itself. Strengthening contents of population medical genetics can serve to enhance this aspect of the causes of complex diseases.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Bains, R. K., Kovacevic, M., Plaster, C. A., Tarekegn, A., Bekele, E., Bradman, N. N., y Thomas, M. G. (2013). Molecular diversity and population structure at the Cytochrome P450 3A5 gene in Africa. BMC genetics, 14(1), 34. doi:10.1186/1471-2156-14-34
Bastos, J. L., Barros, A. J., Celeste, R. K., Paradies, Y., y Faerstein, E. (2014). Age, class and race discrimination: their interactions and associations with mental health among Brazilian university students. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 30(1), 175-186.
Baye, T. M., Wilke, R. A., y Olivier, M. (2009). Genomic and geographic distribution of private SNPs and pathways in human populations. Personalized Medicine, 6, 623-641. doi:10.2217/pme.09.54
Cheng, T. L., y Goodman, E. (2014). Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status in research on child health. Pediatrics,135(1), e225-e237. doi:10.1542/peds.2014-3109
Conte, M. L., Liu, J., Schnell, S., y Omary, M. B. (2017). Globalization and changing trends of biomedical research output. JCI insight, 2(12), e95206. doi:10.1172/jci.insight.95206
Kessler, G. (2014). Controversias sobre la desigualdad: Argentina, 2003-2013. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Landry, L. G., y Rehm, H. L. (2018). Association of racial/ethnic categories with the ability of genetic tests todetect a cause of cardiomyopathy. JAMA Cardiology, 3(4), 341-345. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2017.5333
Landry, L. G., Ali, N., Williams, D. R., Rehm, H. L., y Bonham, V. L. (2018). Lack of diversity in genomic databases is a barrier to translating precision medicine research into practice. Health Affairs, 37(5),780-785. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1595
Lipman, T., y Tiedje, L. B. (2006). Genetic research and health disparities. The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 31(3), 204. doi:10.1097/00005721-200605000-00017
Mersha, T. B., y Abebe, T. (2015). Self-reported race/ethnicity in the age of genomic research: its potential impact on understanding health disparities. Human Genomics, 9:1. doi:10.1186/s40246-014-0023-x
Montenegro, R. A., y Stephens, C. (2006). Indigenous health in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lancet,367(9525), 1859-1869. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68808-9
Ortiz-Hernández, L., Pérez-Salgado, D., y Tamez-González, S. (2015). Socioeconomic inequality and health in Mexico. Revista Médica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, 53(3), 336-347.
Parra, F. C., Amado, R. C., Lambertucci, J. R., Rocha, J., Antunes, C. M., y Pena, S. D. (2003). Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(1), 177-182.
Perreira, K. M., y Telles, E. E. (2014). The color of health: skin color, ethnoracial classification, and discrimination in the health of Latin Americans. Social Science & Medicine, 116, 241-250.
Petrovski, S. y Goldstein, D. B. (2016). Unequal representation of genetic variation across ancestry groups creates healthcare inequality in the application of precision medicine. Genome Biology, 17(1). doi:10.1186/s13059-016-1016-y
Popejoy, A. B., Ritter, D. I., Crooks, K., Currey, E., Fullerton, S. M., …. Hindorff, L. A. (2018). The clinical imperative for inclusivity: Race, ethnicity, and ancestry(REA) in genomics. Human Mutation, 39(11), 1713-1720. doi:10.1002/humu.23644
Ramos, E. y Weissman, S. M. (2018). The dawn of consumer-directed testing. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 178(1), 89-97. doi:10.1002/ajmg.c.31603
Ruiz-Linares, A., Adhikari, K., Acuña-Alonzo, V., Quinto-Sanchez, M., Jaramillo, C., Arias, W., …. Gonzalez-José, R. (2014). Admixture in Latin America: geographicstructure, phenotypic diversity and self-perception of ancestry based on 7,342 individuals. PLoS Genetics,10(9), e1004572. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004572
Travassos, C., y D. R., Williams. (2004). The concept and measurement of race and their relationship to public health: a review focused on Brazil and the United States. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 20(3), 660-678.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (2019). Gasto en investigación y desarrollo (% del PIB). Recuperado de: https://datos.bancomundial.org
Williams, D. R. (2005). The health of U.S. racial and ethnic populations. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 60(Special issue 2), 53-62. doi:10.1093/geronb/60.Special_Issue_2.S53
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The RAAB is a diamond-type open access journal. There are no charges for reading, sending or processing the work. Likewise, authors maintain copyright on their works as well as publication rights without restrictions.
