Latino populations: a unique opportunity for the study of race, genetics, and social environment in epidemiological research

Abstract

Latinos are the largest minority population in the United States. Although usually classified as a single ethnic group by researchers, Latinos are heterogeneous from cultural, socioeconomic, and genetic perspectives. From a cultural and social perspective, Latinos represent a wide variety of national origins and ethnic and cultural groups, with a full spectrum of social class. From a genetic perspective, Latinos are descended from indigenous American, European, and African populations. We review the historical events that led to the formation of contemporary Latino populations and use results from recent genetic and clinical studies to illustrate the unique opportunity Latino groups offer for studying the interaction between racial, genetic, and environmental contributions to disease occurrence and drug response.

FIGURE 1—

Individual ancestry (IA) estimates for 96 healthy Puerto Ricans, clustered by admixture levels. Note. For each individual, genotype data for 116 204 single nucleotide polymorphisms were collected by use of Affymetrix 100K GeneChip array. The genotype data were then used to estimate IA by a modified maximum likelihood approach.

FIGURE 2—

Group ancestry estimates for Mexicans with asthma, by birth site and country of residence. Note. The group ancestry for cases for each clinic was estimated by use of 44 ancestry informative markers (AIMs) and the program ADMIX.PAS (kindly provided by Jeffrey C. Long, Department of Human Genetics, University of Michigan Medical School), which implements a weighted least squares method.

FIGURE 3—

Group ancestry estimates for Puerto Ricans with asthma, by clinical recruitment site. Note. The group ancestry for cases for each clinical recruitment site was estimated by use of 44 ancestry informative markers (AIMs) and the program ADMIX.PAS.