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Researchers are figuring out how African ancestry can affect certain brain disorders : Short Wave
Black Americans have been underrepresented in most genomic studies of neurological disorders. As a result, scientists don't know much about whether African ancestry affects a person's risk for these disorders or their response to a particular treatment. To help close this gap, the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, African American community leaders in Baltimore, and researchers from Duke University and Morgan State University created the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative in 2019. The team found that genes associated with African ancestry appear to affect certain brain cells in ways that could increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and stroke. Read science correspondent Jon Hamilton's full story here. Curious about brain science? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
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Analysis of gene expression in the postmortem brain of neurotypical Black Americans reveals contributions of genetic ancestry
Ancestral differences in genomic variation affect the regulation of gene expression; however, most gene expression studies have been limited to European ancestry samples …
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