A new genomic analysis hints at why African Americans face a higher risk of Alzheimer’s and stroke, but a lower risk of Parkinson’s.
A new study looks at the roles that African and European genetic ancestries can play in Black Americans' risk for some brain disorders.
The study also probed whether genetic ancestry influenced neurons, which are critical to memory, movement, and thinking. “We leveraged the history of the U.S. to pinpoint how European ancestry vs. African ancestry affects gene expression in the brain,” says Kynon Jade Benjamin, a researcher at the Lieber Institute and at Johns Hopkins University who led the work.Gene expression describes how certain genes are turned on or off in a particular cell. That process can be influenced by a person’s genes, experiences, and environment.
And the two lineages’ immune cell differences could help explain why African Americans are more likely to be living with Alzheimer’s dementia, but less likely to get Parkinson’s disease. “We see these health disparities, which we know are partly to do with environment,” Benjamin says, “but there's also a huge genetic component.”The study did not offer much insight into why Black Americans are about 20% more likely than white Americans to experience serious mental health problems, including schizophrenia and depression.
In adult brains, immune cells respond to injury or infection, he says. But earlier in life, “those same brain cell types may be giving rise to psychiatric disorders.”
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