Low vitamin D blood levels are linked to greater risk of heart disease in whites and Chinese, but not in blacks and Hispanics, according to a study appearing this week in JAMA, a journal published by the American Medical Association. Ads by Google Growing evidence has suggested that low blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin are associated with higher risk of developing coronary heart disease among whites. Few of these studies included substantial numbers of people from other races. Vitamin D levels tend to be lower among people from other racial and ethnic minority groups, and some of these populations have higher rates of heart disease. However, after correcting for other risk factors for heart disease in their large, multi-ethnic study group, the researchers reporting in the JAMA paper did not find an association between low vitamin D and cardiovascular events in their black and Hispanic study participants. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-link-vitamin-d-blood-heart.html
No one that I know of. BiDil, for example, is prescribed only for African-Americans since they respond differently to ACE inhibitors.
Lactase persistence (the opposite of lactose intolerance) clearly has a demographic pattern. The people of Western Europe, whose ancestors relied heavily on dairy farming for nutrition, have a very high rate of lactase persistence. Anyone in the past who could not digest milk could very easily have died of malnutrution before reaching puberty. In other regions, where milk was not a staple, lactose intolerance in adulthood is common. There are communities in which it's almost universal. (All mammals produce lactase as babies because milk is the only food they get. As they get older, milk is no longer part of their diet, so they lose the ability to produce the enzyme to digest lactose.)
My mother is lactose intolerant and I am allergic to risperdol. A hormone which promotes the production of milk in females. Curious...
What is your mother's ancestry? Most of us Americans have DNA that's a Mulligan stew of genes from every populated dot of land on the planet. Dairy farming was not practiced in pre-colonial Australia, North America and (sub-Saharan) Africa, so if she has a bloodline from any of those regions, that would explain it. Lactose intolerance is also the norm in most East Asian and Siberian populations, and it's very common among Jewish people--although their DNA tends to be a bit of a hodgepodge, but not as well-stirred as ours. My father's paternal grandparents were Jewish, and I began to manifest lactose intolerance in my mid-20s.
Nobody. Several people have pointed out that the US sociological "races" make little or no genetic sense, but obviously actual genetic races of humans would exhibit differences. We are just beginning to get an idea of what those might be, as we begin to acquire the necessary genetic information and understanding. Meanwhile, we look forward to the randomized clinical trial that would be necessary to actually establish the preliminary results reported - in particular, the methods by which the authors "corrected" for such factors as smoking and diabetes need serious attention: the study's apparent assumption that the effects of smoking, obesity, and diabetes, are independent of vitamin D levels, seems to me to need more support.
