Ancestral link places Mexican-Americans at greater risk for metabolic disease

Uthouston.edu: HOUSTON – (Aug. 24, 2012)

New study results call for better screening for diabetes, heart disease

Mexican-Americans with an ancestral link to Amerindian tribes were found to have higher insulin resistance levels, which is an indication of several chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, according to research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

“Now that we have identified the ancestral link, we have an opportunity to develop some new approaches to personalized medicine using genetic markers,” said HuiQi Qu, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and assistant professor at The University of Texas School of Public Health Brownsville Regional Campus, part of UTHealth. Study results are published in the August issue of Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.

The findings are part of a series of recent articles published in five journals by UTHealth researchers and colleagues that examine the testing, diagnosing and treating of chronic diseases in the Mexican- American population using data and blood samples from the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (CCHC). Read more