Massive underrepresentation of Arabs in genomic studies of common disease
Romit Bhattacharya, Ningning Chen, Injeong Shim, Hiroyuki Kuwahara, Xin Gao, Fowzan S. Alkuraya, Akl C. Fahed
Abstract
Arabs represent 5% of the world population and have a high prevalence of common disease, yet remain greatly underrepresented in genome-wide association studies, where only 1 in 600 individuals are Arab. We highlight the persistent and unaddressed underrepresentation of Arabs in genomic databases and discuss its impact on public health genomics and missed opportunities for biological discovery.
Topics & Concepts
Human geneticsGenomicsDiseasePublic healthGenomic medicineGenomeGeneticsBiologyMedicineComputational biologyEvolutionary biologyGeneInternal medicinePathologyGenetic Associations and EpidemiologyGenomics and Rare DiseasesGenomic variations and chromosomal abnormalities