Researchers find genetic trait that increases HIV danger for blacks

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

An international team of AIDS scientists has discovered a gene variant common in blacks that protects against certain types of malaria but increases susceptibility to HIV infection by 40 percent.

Researchers, keen to find some biological clues to explain why people of African descent are bearing a disproportionate share of the world's AIDS cases, suspect this subtle genetic trait - found in 60 percent of American blacks and 90 percent of Africans - might partly explain the difference.

Ten percent of the world's population lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, but that region accounts for 70 percent of the men, women and children living with HIV infection today. In the United States, African Americans make up 12 percent of the population, but account for half of newly diagnosed HIV infections.

"The cause of this imbalance is not necessarily driven by behavior," said Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "Gay black men do not engage in riskier behavior than gay white men, for example. African people with this gene may have a higher vulnerability."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/16/BARI11PM03.DTL&tsp=1

Turns out, just as the Arabs are sitting on our oil (we'll get them thru war), the blacks are sitting in our bread basket (Africa) and we'll soon need those resources. At least, that's how one theory goes.

world population control

Many diseases strike preponderately at particular genetic subpopulations.

that's a complete load of old bollocks given that well in excess of 60% of Americans of African descent have got white European genes.

Issues on the Africa continent obviously differ mainly due to lack of education through no fault of their own.

:shrug:

:hi:

Sorry - I'm bit touchy about anything which alludes to blacks being any different from whites other than the fact they can invariably dance better to swing music than I can.

to Africans, because their liver enzymes clear nicotine faster and the faster you come down from a high (any high) the more addicting an addicting substance becomes. So, better liver enzymes leads to more risk of cigarette addiction. It is not that they have worse health. Their better health predisposes to a worse health outcome in a certain situation, i.e, exposure to cigarettes.

Humans have been exposed to malaria since the beginning of time and those living in tropical environment have made many adaptations to fight it. Humans were not supposed to be exposed to the monkey virus, HIV, until drastic lifestyle changes (and maybe some deliberate meddling on the part of world governments, who can say) introduced it into our population. Since both malaria and HIV infect blood cells, it is possible that an adaptation to fight one could affect the way that the body responds to the other.

Sickle cell disease exists, because sickle cell trait protects against malaria. If people with sickle cell trait did not survive infancy better in tropical areas and live longer to have more children, we probably would not see so many people with the trait.

Lack of melanin (white looking skin) was an adaptation to the relative lack of sunlight that early humans encountered when they went north into Europe, which was artificially warm for its extreme northern latitude due to the Gulf Stream. It was warm enough to gather food and hunt, but the lack of sunlight meant that people would be Vit. D starved---which meant Ricketts and death---unless people lost their skin pigmentation or turned white. Nowadays that same adaptation puts people at risk for skin cancers like melanoma, especially if they move south again.

We are changing our lifestyles faster than our bodies can keep up. That is what medical science is for.