medwireNews: Genetic lineage and socioeconomic deprivation are both significantly linked to type 2 diabetes risk and may interact to modify that risk, study results show.
Leonardo Mariño-Ramírez (National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Bethesda, Maryland, USA) and colleagues found that socioeconomic deprivation is a greater risk factor for type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian and African descent than in those with European Ancestry .
They say, “The significant interactions between [socioeconomic deprivation] and [genetic ancestry] underline how the effects of environmental risk factors may differ between ancestral groups, suggesting the need for group-specific interventions. “
The results are based on an analysis of the UK Biobank data from 27,748 people with type 2 diabetes and 446,436 control subjects.
As reported in EclinicalMedicine, people describing their ethnicity as Asian had the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes at 17.9%, followed by blacks (11.7%) and whites (5.5%).
In addition, the prevalence of diabetes increased with increasing socioeconomic deprivation, but the researchers find that the black group had the highest socioeconomic deprivation as measured by the Townsend Index, followed by the Asian group, with the white group having the lowest levels of deprivation.
Further analyzes showed that male sex, increasing age and increasing socio-economic deprivation were each significantly associated with the risk of diabetes, with odds ratios (ORs) of 1.86, 1.78 and 1.11, respectively.
In addition, there was a significant interaction between socioeconomic deprivation and genetic ancestry – assessed by principal component analysis of whole genome data as a more accurate measure of ethnicity than self-reporting.
This meant that socio-economic deprivation was “a relatively greater risk factor for” [type 2 diabetes] for people of South Asian and African descent versus people of European descent, ”the researchers note.
For example, individuals of South Asian descent in the highest tertile of social deprivation had a significantly 7.95-fold higher risk of type 2 diabetes than individuals of European descent in the lowest tertile of deprivation. In people of African descent and high levels of deprivation, the risk was 4.95 times higher than in Europeans with low levels of deprivation.
Mariño-Ramírez and co-authors conclude that although “it is not possible,” [to] fail to draw firm conclusions about the relative importance “of the contribution of genetic ancestry compared to socioeconomic deprivation to diabetes risk, their data suggests that” more tribe-specific measures need to be taken at the political level to reduce health inequalities by channeling resources to communities who are most at risk. “
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Clinical Medicine 2021; doi: 10.1016 / j.eclinm.2021.100960
