Thursday, July 15, 2010
Sleeping sickness, kidney disease and African ancestry
A gene that appears to protect people from sleeping sickness in Africa also appears to make black Americans four times more likely to develop kidney disease. This explains why African-Americans are far more likely than whites to suffer from kidney disease. More than 30% of African Americans carry at least one copy of the risky gene sequences and people with two copies of them had 10 times the usual risk of kidney disease. The gene involved is called APOL1.
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Actually, more than 30% of African American *chromosomes* carry one risky allele. This amounts to approximately one out of two African Americans carrying at least one risk allele and about 10-12% carrying two risk alleles.
This amounts to approximately one out of two African Americans carrying at least one risk allele
Doesn't that seem a little high?
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