Making the case for more diversity in genetic research – Michigan Medicine

The consortium brings together genome-wide association data from 200 cohort studies across the globe, allowing research teams to closely investigate key genetic variation related to blood cholesterol levels in a lot of people at once. U.S. veterans participating in the Million Veteran Program were a major contributor to the increased diversity of the GLGC. In all, around 500 scientists who have collected and analyzed these data are credited as co-authors.

The researchers already knew they needed many, many participants in order to draw big conclusions about lipid levels. What they didnt know in advance was exactly how big the benefit would be of studying diverse samples.

Of three aspects of the research they examined, diversity made a big difference for two of them, and a smaller difference for the third. Willer said they identified approximately the same number of total genetic variation related to lipids (thousands of them), irrespective of the level of diversity.

However, for homing in on the functional gene, or for predicting high cholesterol levels, researchers report that diversity was critically important.

We find that increasing the diversity of the populations studied rather than simply increasing sample size more efficiently identifies the genetic variants that control cholesterol levels in our blood, Assimes said. Importantly, we can potentially level the playing field when it comes to predicting cholesterol levels if we introduce diversity into our study design, and the more diversity we introduce, the better.

LDL cholesterol is a warning bell for future cardiovascular events like heart attacks, so a high cholesterol level in an annual physical is likely to lead to a discussion about how to lower it.

If you could find out in advance that you were more susceptible to having high blood lipids, or high risk of heart attacks, then you could reduce your cholesterol before it even becomes a problem, Graham said.

SEE ALSO: Cholesterol-carrying protein found to help suppress immune response in pancreatic tumor microenvironment

We hope this study will one day allow physicians to better identify people at risk of high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease who may benefit from lifestyle changes or lipid-lowering medication earlier in life, she added.

This study also suggests that genetic studies of any diseases would likely benefit from studying people of diverse ancestries, researchers said.

We should work hard to ensure that genetics research benefits all people, and improving diversity of ancestries represented in research is an important step towards equality, Willer said.

Paper cited: The power of genetic diversity in genome-wide association studies of lipids, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02998-2

The rest is here:
Making the case for more diversity in genetic research - Michigan Medicine