Genetics of Racial Differences in Drug Response, Disease Risk, and Health Disparities

There are multiple candidate-gene based studies indicating that genetic variability associated with race may affect drug response. Some genomic variation, such as in G6PD, affects disease risk (e.g. malaria) as well as drug toxicity.  Genome-wide studies have revealed tremendous differences in allele frequency that can be traced to the out-of-Africa migration of ancestral populations, and some of this genomic variation affects drug response and disease risk.  Population substructure can also result in false positive associations in genome-wide studies. Examples of ancestry-related pharmacogenomic associations will be presented.