Drug responses vary between Africans and Europeans

Further to my various articles on our ancestry, differences in gene expression levels between people of European versus African ancestry appear to affect how each group responds to certain drugs or fights off specific infections, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Expression Research Laboratory at Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA.

The researchers used lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from blood from 180 healthy individuals. They studied 60 nuclear families, including mother, father and child. Thirty of the families were Caucasians from Utah and 30 were Yorubans from Ibadan, Nigeria.

Mainly focusing on cancer treatments, the researcher sought to understand why different populations experienced different degrees of toxicity when taking certain drugs and also to learn how to predict who might be most at risk for drug side effects.

But in the process they saw several other differences. Some, including variation in the immune system’s response to microbial invaders, were expected. Previous studies have found that African Americans may be more susceptible than Caucasians to infection by certain bacteria, such as Porphyromonas gingivalis that causes periodontitis.

Others were unanticipated, including significant differences in expression levels among genes involved in fundamental cellular processes such as ribosomal biogenesis, transfer RNA processing, and Notch-signaling–part of a complex system of communication that governs basic cellular activities and coordinates cell actions.

For more information on this article, click on:

http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2008/20080228-expression.html

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com