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Google Maps, Disease Risk, and Migration
First time accepted submitter ecorona writes "This Google Maps mashup was published in Science (paywall warning) this week. It shows genetic risk for multiple diseases distributed across the globe. It's easy to follow the migration path and see which diseases increase/decrease in risk along human migration paths. Click on the populations to see the relative risk of the selected disease for each population. You can pick your a disease and see which populations are more susceptible. The article is behind a paywall, but the website is free to use." On a similar note, an anonymous reader points out
a British research project that "used Twitter to track and map flu-like illnesses across the U.K. to determine if epidemics were emerging. The research culminated into an online visual tool, the Flu Detector, that maps tweeted flu rates in several regions across the U.K."
I also found that chart hard to believe - For example, the highest risk for alcoholism was in Indonesia(a Muslim country) but NOT Mexico?!
Also, I rolled my eyes at "restless leg syndrome," aka "get-some-more-exercise-fatso" syndrome. Here are the biggest losers of the somewhat racist implications of the chart:
Prostate cancer - sub-Saharan Africa
Cirrhosis - China
Parkinson's - China, Indonesia
Asthma - Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa
Inflammatory bowel disease - Italy all the way, baby
Obesity - Northern South America, but NOT the US?!
Schizophrenia - Mid+Southern Africa, Sino-Asia
Google also has a flu trends mapping: http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/
As best I was able to tell, the chart was looking at specifically genetic(SNPs), rather than lifestyle, risk factors across various historical migration paths.
If they are looking at genetic risk factors, rather than lifestyle risks or overall incidence, it seems more plausible that higher risks would show up in odd places: genetic risks only get selected against in environments where they cause problems. If alcohol or cheap calories aren't available, the genes impose no penalty and spread more readily.
As for the migration paths, I can only assume that the data for the americas are so sketchy because they have the shortest history of human habitation(not only did the first humans show up there relatively recently, their descendants died off pretty dramatically during the colonial period, leaving much of the present population largely descended from one old world migration path or another)...
Many diseases have flu-like symptoms, and most uneducated people who have any of those diseases would tweet that "they have the flu" without being tested or consulting a doctor, and those false positives would be picked up by the software.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
If they are red
Green maybe?
According to the map, I've been dead six years.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As an American, it's interesting that when this site talks of "migration" it pretty much means the older migrations to what is now Latin America via the land bridge. I know I've heard stories of certain European or African populations having genetic disease, and that being carried over into the US. Judging from the maps I'd guess this study takes a wider view, rather than express the realities of more recent migrations. (I'm no biologist, but this has to be interesting. The amount at which people travel these days and inter-breed probably makes for an interesting graph, maybe impossible to track at a fine grain.)
Red means higher risk and green means lower risk. There's a legend on the top left. Click on the circle that represents your ancestral origins. You can see the predicted increase in risk (likelihood ratio). It also traces the migration path your ancestors took to found your ancestral population. Click the other figure (Human Relationships) on the top left to see the same stuff but on a view that shows how all relationships on the map are related.
Then you're damned lucky, you died about the time the civilization peaked.
Well, nerds of European descent...
The genetic risk of alcoholism and extroversion from 23andMe:
http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/10/21/genes-and-geography/
And more along the lines of the original story:
Parkinson's and BCC
Obesity - Northern South America, but NOT the US?!
The emphasis of chart is on genetic ancestry and not location. Although the two coincide with each other from a historical perspective, location is meaningless for the USA. For example, most Americans can trace their ancestry to Europe while others South American. Over generations to this day, Americans are to put it bluntly, mutts. Based on that chart, my ancestry is mainly made up of Orcadian followed by North Italian and some Pima. Honestly, I wouldn't know how to calculate my risk if those numbers are based on purity alone. Once you mix the genetics, the results aren't evenly calculable within the ratios.
Life is not for the lazy.
It's not due to lower environmental exposure, its genetic. The gene ALDH2 is responsible for breaking down alcohol in the liver, and for 50% of Asians half the enzymes produced from this gene are ineffective in breaking down the alcohol. On the other hand, this makes them less susceptible to alcoholism, perhaps only due to the fact that they avoid drinking too much because of the effect it has on them.
It's not due to lower environmental exposure, its genetic.
And how do those genes become predominant in a population? Because lower environmental exposure means people with that gene have a better chance of living long enough to reproduce.
No. Founder's effect is a FAR more likely explanation, and is going going to be responsible for most of these variations.
This to be expected, .. the higher the live expectancy, the worse the gene pool becomes, .. in 3rd world countries people with bad genes are probably not surviving, .. due to missing medical treatment, .. so countries where live expectancy are higher, people do tend to get kids at an older age, and a lot of people with bad genes survive and are allowed to reproduce, .. I'm not saying there should be bans I'm just suggesting this is obvious, .. and everyone can come to this conclusion.
And this got nothing to do with bad habits. like alcohol, smoking, or whatever.
As it is a early human migration map, the dot in the US refers to native Amercans, who as far as I know are not known for there obesity. The modern obese US is mostly of European descent. Further study is of course warranted into modern migration patterns but these are not shown on the map here.
Where's the data? Has no-one migrated past Indonesia?