Had researchers only read the stories of people of European descent, this difference may have been missed, and some people may have been prescribed a dose that was either too small or too large for them.
Medical science has a problem–it’s missing something. That something is the diversity of genetic stories from people around the world. This means that not only is it harder to find the causes of some diseases and effective ways to treat them, some diseases are getting overlooked entirely. Our DNA is our body’s instruction manual, but it’s also a history book that records our own, unique genetic story. All our stories begin around 300,000 years ago when humans arose in Africa, and some genetic stories tell of leaving a couple of hundred thousand years later, journeying into Europe, East Asia, or the Americas. We share 99.9% of our DNA with each other, but that 0.1% difference is incredibly powerful.
The problem is that medical science is not currently reading all these stories. Researchers find lots of people who have a certain condition and comb through their genetic stories, looking for little variations they share. But the genetic stories that researchers are combing through are heavily biased to those of people from European descent. This means that if they are searching for those disease-causing bits of DNA to target new drugs against, they may completely overlook key bits in the stories of other diverse groups that tell of, say, a changed risk of disease or even shed light on how a disease occurs.
When new treatments or medical devices are being tested, they need to be tested on everyone that may use them. If the genetic stories involved don’t reflect the breadth of stories in our worldwide library then, again, something might be missed. For example, researchers have found that, to produce the same effect, most people of East Asian descent need a lower dose of the medicine Warfarin than some people of European descent, and most people of African ethnicity need a larger dose. Had researchers only read the stories of people of European descent, this difference may have been missed, and some people may have been prescribed a dose that was either too small or too large for them. The dose that works best for someone can vary depending on their ethnicity, which is why it is important to include people from different ethnicities in clinical trials. The solution to this is to involve everyone’s stories in medical research, from the early stages of research to drug development and clinical trials. An example of this is cancer researchers at University College London who are looking to analyze tissue samples from a wide range of ethnicities. The bottom line is that medical science needs to have the widest possible collection of genetic stories in order to ensure that everyone can get the best medical treatment available.