Race and Ethnicity Stratification for Polygenic Risk Score Analyses May Mask Disparities in Hispanics
Shoa L. Clarke, Rose D. L. Huang, Austin T. Hilliard, Catherine Tcheandjieu, Julie A. Lynch, Scott M. Damrauer, Kyong‐Mi Chang, Philip S. Tsao, Themistocles L. Assimes
Abstract
Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are central to the development of precision medicine.However, decades of Euro-centric genomics research have paved the way for disparities in their clinical applications. 1,2Current PRSs may provide weaker predictions for populations with significant non-European ancestry. 1Counter to this observation, studies of coronary artery disease (CAD) PRSs have shown similar predictive power in Hispanic and non-Hispanic White populations, 3,4 despite Hispanics being significantly underrepresented in genomewide association studies and PRS development studies. 2 We hypothesized that PRSs provide weaker risk predictions for some Hispanics, but this disparity is masked when the diverse Hispanic population is aggregated into a single group.