An effort to diversify genetic research finds new variant for Parkinson’s disease in African populations
A research team has discovered a genetic variant that increases the risk of Parkinson’s in people of African descent, a finding that could improve treatment in an underserved population.
A group of Nigerian, British, and U.S. doctors have discovered a genetic variant that increases the risk of Parkinson’s disease in people of African and mixed-African descent and is not seen in those with European ancestry, a finding that could improve treatment of the movement disorder in a vastly underserved population.
“It could be a major mechanistic basis of Parkinson’s disease in African populations,” the researchers said in their paper, published this week in Lancet Neurology, noting that understanding ancestry-specific risk for the disease was “a particularly crucial point as the Parkinson’s disease field moves towards targeted treatments in clinical trials.”
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