Blacks have trouble clearing cervical cancer virus
Source: AP-Excite
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
CHICAGO (AP) - Provocative new research might help explain why black women are so much more likely than whites to develop and die from cervical cancer: They seem to have more trouble clearing HPV, the virus that causes the disease.
Doctors have long thought that less access to screening and follow-up health care were the reasons black women are 40 percent more likely to develop cervical cancer and twice as likely to die from it. The new study involving young college women suggests there might be a biological explanation for the racial disparity, too.
If further study confirms this novel finding, it would make the HPV vaccine even more important for black women, said Worta McCaskill-Stevens, a prevention specialist at the National Cancer Institute. The vaccine is recommended for all girls starting at age 11.
The study was presented Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research conference in Chicago.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120401/D9TS84J81.html
HipChick
(25,485 posts)[img][/img]
Iris
(15,653 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)its Afro Caribbean as opposed to Asian and there are no issues with that whatsoever.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,314 posts)It applies worldwide, so "African Americans" wouldn't be correct. "Sub-Saharan Africans" might make people think it's people living in those countries now, rather than anyone with significant ancestry from there.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Theirry Henry and Lewis Hamilton are black; neither is African-American.
HotRodTuna
(114 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Lately, researchers have been asking, Where did these "good genes" come from? The answer: sex with Neanderthals. Well, to be more accurate: ancient interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans gave modern Homo sapiens the ability to fight certain diseases. The journal article, published in Science, is entitled "The Shaping of Modern Human Immune Systems by Multiregional Admixture with Archaic Humans."
...
Based on DNA analysis, Neanderthals and Denisovans had very similar HLA genes. Remarkably, present-day East Asians owe 70-95% of their HLA genes to interbreeding with Denisovans. Present-day Europeans owe roughly half of their HLA genes to interbreeding with Neanderthals. Present-day Africans owe roughly 6% of their HLA to Neanderthals/Denisovans, probably via later generations of hominids who travelled back to Africa. (Sidenote: it is likely that present-day Africans owe some of their immune system to interbreeding with non-Neanderthal/Denisovan early hominid species.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/priya-malhotra/sex-with-neanderthals-the_b_954883.html
Immune system differences are not surprising.
NickB79
(19,236 posts)As if the existing ones weren't good enough.
davsand
(13,421 posts)I am not wildly "anti vaccine"--in fact from a public health perspective vaccinations make a lot of sense in most cases. However, I do not think I want to run right out and get my daughter vaccinated with Gardasil. There's a lot of question remaining about safety and usefulness for that particular product.
What follows is a link to Mercola's website. I'll grant you that I don't agree with him 100% of the time, but he does do a good job of putting up health articles from all over the world. As a reader, you can cross check his sources if you like, and it does allow you to make some decisions with a bit more information than you might have had otherwise.
Happy reading!
http://search.mercola.com/search/pages/results.aspx?k=gardasil
Laura
NickB79
(19,236 posts)Except, rather than rely on quack websites like Mercola, I read the peer-reviewed studies that are published in reputable scientific journals. Mercola has been shown over and over again to post unsubstantiated garbage rather than actual science, but that's what you'd expect since it is a website devoted to selling homeopathic remedies and multivitamins rather than real medicine.
I have a 2-yr old daughter; she will be vaccinated against HPV.
davsand
(13,421 posts)"More than two dozen women and girls died in 2008 after receiving Gardasil injections. According to a press release issued by Judicial Watch, there have been a total of 47 deaths linked to Gardasil since it was brought to market in 2006.
Gardasil is a vaccination that prevents some forms of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Gardasil has been controversial because of attempts by drug manufacturer Merck to make it mandatory, and because of continuing questions about its safety.
Judicial Watch says it has obtained records from the FDA documenting 28 deaths in 2008 associated with Gardasil, up from 19 deaths in 2007. According to the group, the FDA documented 6,723 "adverse events" related to Gardasil in 2008, of which 1,061 were considered "serious," and 142 considered "life threatening."
Sources:
YourLawyer.com June 25, 2009"
------------------------
As of September 28, 2010, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has more than 18,000 Gardasil-related adverse events listed in it, including at least 65 deaths.
-----------------------
For example, a rough comparison of Gardasil and Menactra (a vaccine against meningitis) adverse event reports to VAERS through November 30, 2008 revealed that:
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least twice as many emergency room visit reports; 4 times more death reports; 5 times more "did not recover" reports; and 7 times more "disabled" reports.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with all of the reports of blood clots. All 23 reports of blood clots following Gardasil occurred when Gardasil was given alone without any other vaccines.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 4 times as many cardiac arrest reports. All 9 reports of cardiac arrest following Gardasil occurred when Gardasil was given alone without any other vaccines.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 6 times as many fainting reports and at least 3 times as many syncope reports.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 4 times as many lupus reports. 27 reports of lupus following Gardasil occurred when Gardasil was given alone.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 15 times as many stroke reports. 16 reports of stroke following Gardasil occurred when Gardasil was given alone.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 3 times as many syncope reports.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 33 times as many thrombosis reports. 34 reports of thrombosis following Gardasil occurred when Gardasil was given alone.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 5 times as many sasculitis reports. 11 reports of vasculitis following Gardasil occurred when Gardasiil was given alone.
Compared to Menactra, receipt of Gardasil is associated with at least 30 times as many rechallenge reports, which involve a worsening of symptoms experienced after previous receipt of Gardasil.
What's disturbing about this is that these reports in all likelihood are just the tip of the iceberg because most physicians are making their reports to Merck, rather than to VAERS, and Merck is forwarding such poor quality information to VAERS that the CDC and FDA can't follow up on the majority of reports that Merck makes.
As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August 2009, Merck made 68 percent of the reports to VAERS and 89 percent of them had information that was too insufficient to review!
------------
Not exactly pushing vitamins, IMO.
Do as you wish with your child and I will too.
Laura
NickB79
(19,236 posts)Anyone who relies heavily on VAERS rather than the peer-reviewed, published science shows just how little they know about how the scientific research community works.
BTW, I have a degree in biochemistry. I've wasted entire weekends reading the same misconceptions like those found in your post over the years, and despite all the evidence to the contrary it never seems to change. Funny that.
MD20
(123 posts)When I noticed this report in the news I thought, Oh, here we go again...another stab at Black people that no one can really prove.
The central theme so prevalent in this type of "research" data is that American blacks are somehow genetically subpar. I cannot accept that premise. Genetic exchanges between Whites and Blacks have taken place for thousands of years but more recently, in the Americas, slavery has played a significant role in gene distribution among the two groups. Pondering that. one wonders what group of Blacks participated in the mentoned HPV study. I would think that, in the present genetic cloud, pure black genes would be hard to find.
Moreover, it has been circulated prominently in scientific circles that people of mixed genetic heritage are genetically stronger than either of the parent groups.
Black people are no more promiscuous than white people. Furthermore, the face of poverty in America in sheer numbers (not statistics) is White. Nevertheless, every negative report about black susceptibility to disease seems strategically issued to keep the White populace in a state of constant alarm concerning Blacks while ignoring the plight of the white poor.
I see cause for alarm because the pharmaceuticals are owned by the 1%. They have no feelings of jingoism or sensitivitiy for any of us and have proven it by allowing clandestine medical experiments to occur with alarmjing frequency throughout our history. Race wasn't an issue in many of the experiments but for some, there was extreme predjudice involved.
This post is NOT meant to be hurtful or harmful to anyone,,, it is just meant to remember the past. We don't want to keep repeating that past!
antigone382
(3,682 posts)Race is a social construct. When you take it down to the genetic level, there are as many average genetic variations between two people of the same race as there are between two people of different races; if you don't know the genes that code for skin color, hair texture, and various facial features that we use to determine ethnicity, it is impossible to classify people into genetic groups based on their DNA alone.
However, that doesn't mean that there aren't certain health risks that are more prevalent among certain groups. For example, cystic fibrosis is much more common among white Europeans, while sickle-cell anemia is more common among people from sub-Saharan Africa or parts of India where malaria was particularly present, and Ashkenazi jews are more prone to Tay-Sachs disorder.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Not doubt there is something interesting genetically behind this, but casting it to a racial context is, well, racist.
Beacool
(30,247 posts)Last edited Fri Apr 6, 2012, 12:18 PM - Edit history (2)
There are genetic markers that affect people of the same race. That's why when they search for bone marrow donors they specify the race of the donors that they need (based on the recipient's race).
It has nothing to do with racism.
Here's some info.
"Sickle-cell disease, usually presenting in childhood, occurs more commonly in people (or their descendants) from parts of tropical and sub-tropical regions where malaria is or was common. One-third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa carry the gene,[4] because in areas where malaria is common, there is a fitness benefit in carrying only a single sickle-cell gene (sickle cell trait). Those with only one of the two alleles of the sickle-cell disease, while not totally resistant, are more tolerant to the infection and thus show less severe symptoms when infected.[5]
The prevalence of the disease in the United States is approximately 1 in 5,000, mostly affecting Americans of Sub-Saharan African descent, according to the National Institutes of Health.[6] In the United States, about 1 out of 500 African-American children born will have sickle-cell anaemia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease
bemildred
(90,061 posts)There ain't no such thing, just people who have light skin. Genetics does not organize itself around skin color or any other surface characteristics.
Beacool
(30,247 posts)I'm not in the medical field. I'm sure that someone who is can explain it better.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)It's a ridiculous idea. If you have the genetic markers, you have the markers, if you don't, then you don't. It has nothing to do with your skin color.
hack89
(39,171 posts)then you could tell.
Humans don't have a uniform genetic makeup. As human populations spread out over the earth, different groups evolved differently as they experienced different adaptive pressures. And this extends well beyond skin color. Some good examples include:
1. Lactose tolerance. Wide variance across the world depending on whether populations depended on milk(horse or cow) for foods.
2. Sickle cell anemia - prevalent in populations with high incidences of malaria.
3. Hypertension - much more prevalent in dark skinned people. Salt retention in a high temperature environment is a beneficial adaptation as it prevents you from sweating away all your body's salt and dying.
You are right that race is a cultural concept. But it is not true to say that the color of someone's skin is not predictive of that person's genetic susceptibility to different diseases.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)They don't mean diddle about any particular persons. If you are a particular person (I assume you are) then you have things or you don't. Do you want your medical care to be conditioned by your skin color, and the statistical properties of your race, or gender, or do you want it to be about who you really are?
If you have this issue with HPV, then you want it found, even if you are "white", and "probably" don't need that test.
hack89
(39,171 posts)and I had to develop health care policies for a large number of people, then those "statistical correlations" are critically important. They will tell me the likelihood that a particular population will develop certain diseases. It would enable me to manage my resources in the most effective manner to benefit the largest number of people. Thus, if I was dealing with a majority AA population, I know I must allocate more resources to prevent and treat hypertension than I would if I was dealing with a population with few AA.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)People do.
I'm not saying those correlations don't exist, or that we should ignore them, just that they are merely clues, they do not compel They are like the chance that your next card will be a ace, useful to know when you are betting, irrelevant when you want to be sure.
hack89
(39,171 posts)the incident of certain disease varies considerably by race. You cannot argue that genetics is a significant determinant as to what kind of diseases you will get.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health#Multifactorial_polygenic_diseases
So you have to look at each halogroup to determine how it differs from the others and why that difference is significant for each disease. If a given disease acts differently with a particular halogroup then you might have to have a unique treatment for that group. If 99 percent of that particular group happens to have dark skin then that means that people with dark skin will have to treated differently than people with lighter skin.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I know it's messy, that's another reason I think these sorts of stories are horseshit, because we don't really understand how genetics works worth a damn either; but I was avoiding bringing that up because I though it would be sort of a red-herring.
hack89
(39,171 posts)The disease may be more virulent with one group over another and therefore may be a more dangerous threat.
There is a legitimate reason to look at medicine from a racial basis - that is what the science supports.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I do appreciate the civil way you have conducted yourself, and I apologize if I have annoyed you. It took me a long time to let go of the idea of race too, I don't know if I'll ever really be done with it.
hack89
(39,171 posts)removes all the cultural baggage the word "race" carries.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)And not because racism is bad, which it is, but because it is simple-minded horseshit, which it also is.
rayofreason
(2,259 posts)...given that population variations can have significant effects on body chemistry, such as the lactose tolerance in adults you mentioned. And humans continue to evolve.
http://www.lurj.org/article.php/vol4n1/genome.xml
Race certainly does have a social context, but it also overlaps with populations that have different frequencies of specific alleles that might be relevant to things like disease and its treatment, especially if the treatment targets a specific biochemical pathway. Not to consider such issues that could disproportionately impact (negatively) a particular population could be seen as....well.... racist.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)The problem is that surface characteristics don't tell you much about the genes of any particular person.
hack89
(39,171 posts)it is absolutely certain that every AA is predominantly halogroup L. Conversely, no one of Chinese descent will be of halogroup L.
Each halogroup is genetically distinctive and each has unique susceptibility to certain diseases associated with it.
Surface characteristics tell you a hell of a lot about a persons genes.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Lewontin's argument and criticism
In 1972 Richard Lewontin performed a FST statistical analysis using 17 markers including blood group proteins. His results were that the majority of genetic differences between humans, 85.4%, were found within a population, 8.3% of genetic differences were found between populations within a race, and only 6.3% was found to differentiate races which in the study were Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, and Australian Aborigines. Since then, other analyses have found FST values of 6%-10% between continental human groups, 5-15% between different populations occupying the same continent, and 75-85% within populations.[23][24][25][26] Lewontin's argument led a number of authors publishing in the 1990s and 2000s to follow Lewontin's verdict that race is biologically a meaningless concept.
While acknowledging the correctness of Lewontin's observation that racial groups are genetically homogeneous, geneticist A. W. F. Edwards in the paper "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy" (2003) argued that the conclusion that racial groups can not be genetically distinguished from each other is incorrect. Edwards argued that when multiple allelles are taken into account genetic differences do tend to cluster in geographic patterns roughly corresponding to the groups commonly defined as races. This is because most of the information that distinguishes populations from each other is hidden in the correlation structure of allele frequencies, making it possible to highly reliably classify individuals using the mathematical techniques described above. Edwards argued that, even if the probability of misclassifying an individual based on a single genetic marker is as high as 30% (as Lewontin reported in 1972), the misclassification probability becomes close to zero if enough genetic markers are studied simultaneously. Edwards saw Lewontin's argument as being based mostly in a political stance that denies the existence biological difference in order to argue for social equality. [4]
Richard Dawkins (2005) agreed with Edwards' view, summarizing the argument against Lewontin as being, "However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are highly correlate with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance."[27]
Alan Templeton (2003) argued that in the nonhuman literature an FST of at least 25%-30% is a standard criterion for the identification of a subspecies.[24] John Goodrum has noted that Templeton incorrectly cited this figure from a 1997 article from Herpetological Review entitled Subspecies and Classification".[28] The authors of that paper do not refer to Fst values. They are referring the 75 percent rule for subspecies.[29]
Henry Harpending (2002) has argued that the magnitude of human FST values imply that "kinship between two individuals of the same human population is equivalent to kinship between grandparent and grandchild or between half siblings. The widespread assertion that this is small and insignificant should be reexamined." [30]
Sarich and Miele (2004) have argued that estimates of genetic difference between individuals of different populations fail to take into account human diploidity. "The point is that we are diploid organisms, getting one set of chromosomes from one parent and a second from the other. To the extent that your mother and father are not especially closely related, then, those two sets of chromosomes will come close to being a random sample of the chromosomes in your population. And the sets present in some randomly chosen member of yours will also be about as different from your two sets as they are from one another. So how much of the variability will be distributed where? First is the 15 percent that is interpopulational. The other 85 percent will then split half and half (42.5 percent) between the intra- and interindividual within-population comparisons. The increase in variability in between-population comparisons is thus 15 percent against the 42.5 percent that is between-individual within-population. Thus, 15/42.5 is 32.5 percent, a much more impressive and, more important, more legitimate value than 15 percent."[31]
Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace[32] and Jonathan Kaplan[33] and geneticist Joseph Graves,[34] have argued that while there it is certainly possible to find biological and genetic variation that corresponds roughly to the groupings normally defined as races, this is true for almost all geographically distinct populations. The cluster structure of the genetic data is therefore dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the populations sampled. When one samples continental groups the clusters become continental, if one had chosen other sampling patterns the clusters would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials.[35] Kaplan therefore argues that seen in this way both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. He concludes that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. In this view racial groupings are social constructions that also have biological reality which is largely an artefact of how the category has been constructed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Race_and_population_genetic_structure
hack89
(39,171 posts)several of which are dominated by dark skinned peoples.
The M type consists of:
M1- Ethiopian, Somali and Indian populations. Likely due to much gene flow between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman), separated only by a narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
CZ- Many Siberians; branch C- Some Amerindian; branch Z- Many Saami, some Korean, some North Chinese, some Central Asian populations.
D- Some Amerindians, many Siberians and northern East Asians
E- Malay, Borneo, Philippines, Taiwan aborigines, Papua New Guinea
G- Many Northeast Siberians, northern East Asians, and Central Asians
Q- Melanesian, Polynesian, New Guinean populations
The N type consists of:
A- Found in some Amerindians, Japanese, and Koreans
I- 10% frequency in Northern, Eastern Europe
S- Some Australian aborigines
W- Some Eastern Europeans, South Asians, and southern East Asians
X- Some Amerindians, Southern Siberians, Southwest Asians, and Southern Europeans
Y- Most Nivkhs and many Ainus; 1% in Southern Siberia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#Groups_without_mutation_M168
So why the concept of race may not apply, skin color certainly does when determining genetic susceptibility to certain diseases - skin color is a prime indicator of what haplogroup you belong to.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)One of the activities most popular in colonial regimes is making babies with the indigenous people.
They don't call the USA a "melting pot" for nothing.
A couple of centuries cannot undo millions of years of evolution.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)We are right in the midst of a large, global, mass-extinction, also in the midst of rapid global climate change. Evolution can be quick with all that "weeding out" going on.
hack89
(39,171 posts)with no sign of them being merged into some super group.
This is scientific fact - you will have to present some actual studies if you still want to argue that humans can be group into distinct genetic groups.
hack89
(39,171 posts)Well, I've enjoyed the civil chat anyway.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)population began to expand and they spread to other parts of the world outside of Africa.
Otherwise your point still stands, and in fact, significant populations still haven't bred with each other yet, not to any great quantity.
Liber-AL
(71 posts)Since ALL humans alive today are descendants of a mitochondrial Eve from that epochal population, it would appear that all of modern humanity started out with the same Haplogroup. I am reluctant to say "L," because I don't know what the environment of East Africa was 200,000 year ago. That factor is significant since environment is thought to be the catalyst in haplogroup mutations that deviated from the original (L?) groups as modern humans left Africa.
Complicating things further is the fact that there are two distinct sets of haplogroup markers:
one originating from a common Patrilineal ancestor and the other from the matrilineal side , each with a distinct
set of letters to denote degree of mutation. From the common ancestor's mTDNA haplogroup, thought to be L, all other matrilineal
haplogroups have been proven to be mutations
Using these haplogroupings to predict proclivity towards specific diseases in African Americans , though, may have disastrous effects since so many are of mixed genetic heritage.
As crazy as it might seem, White physicians don't seem to differentiate between near white-skinned Blacks and those who are very dark-skinned in making diagnoses and remedies. But even then, the dark skinned Black may not physically be the stereotypical genetic model used to treat ALL blacks. His ancestry may put him/her in a group consistent with that of a Native American or North European.
Perhaps, an awareness of this problem would be worthwhile in preventing medical mishaps due to race based medical procedures and prescriptions. And to make things worse, you get silly reports of "studies" like the one claiming "blacks" are more susceptible to HPV than whites. I guess bad news about Blacks sells better!
Thanks, well said.
Well, my post is almost as good as yours but I still have a ways to go.