African Americans Possessed High Prevalence of Comorbidities and Frequent Abdominal Symptoms, and Comprised A Disproportionate Share of Covid-19 Mortality among 9,873 Us- Hospitalized Patients Early in the Pandemic.

Background And Aim: Identifying clinical characteristics and outcomes of different ethnicities in the US may inform treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Aim of this study is to identify predictors of mortality among US races/ethnicities.

Design Setting And Participants: We retrospectively analyzed de-identified data from 9,873 COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized at 15 US hospital centers in 11 states (March 2020-November 2020).

Community-initiated genomics.

Ancient DNA is used to connect enslaved African Americans to modern descendants.

Core issues, case studies, and the need for expanded Legacy African American genomics.

Genomic studies of Legacy African Americans have a tangled and convoluted history in western science. In this review paper, core issues affecting African American genomic studies are addressed and two case studies, the New York African Burial Ground and the Gullah Geechee peoples, are presented to highlight the current status of genomic research among Africa Americans. To investigate our target population's core issues, a metadatabase derived from 22 publicly accessible databases were reviewed, evaluated, and synthesized to identify the core bioethical issues prevalent during the centuries of the African American presence in North America.

Not just in the past: Racist and sexist biases still permeate biology, anthropology, medicine, and education.

In the past decades, it has been increasingly recognized that some areas of science, such as anthropology, have been plagued by racist, Western-centric, and/or sexist biases. Unfortunately, an acculturation process to racism and sexism has been occurring for generations leading to systemic inequities that will take a long time to disappear. Here, we highlight the existence of current examples of racism, Western-centrism and sexism within: (1) the most popular anatomical atlases used in biological, anthropological and medical education; (2) prominent natural history museums and World Heritage Sites; (3) biological and anthropological scientific research publications; and (4) popular culture and influential children's books and educational materials concerning human biology and evolution.

Symptomatic, clinical and biomarker associations for mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients enriched for African Americans.

Background And Aims: Initial reports on US COVID-19 showed different outcomes in different races. In this study we use a diverse large cohort of hospitalized COVID-19 patients to determine predictors of mortality.

Methods: We analyzed data from hospitalized COVID-19 patients (n = 5852) between March 2020- August 2020 from 8 hospitals across the US.

Evolutionary perspectives on African North American genetic diversity: Origins and prospects for future investigations.

African-descended peoples of the Americas represent an amalgamation of West, Central, and Southeast African regional and ethnic groups with modest gene flow from specific non-African populations. Despite 16+ generations of residence in the Americas, there is a deficit of evolutionary knowledge about these populations. Focusing on Legacy African American, the African North American descendants of survivors of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, we report on emic evolutionary perspectives of their self-identity gleaned from our interviews of 600 individuals collected over 2 years.

So many Nigerians: why is Nigeria overrepresented as the ancestral genetic homeland of Legacy African North Americans?

The genetics of African North Americans are complex amalgamations of various West and Central African peoples with modest gene flow from specific European and Amerindian peoples. A comprehensive understanding of African North American biohistory is a prerequisite for accurate interpretations of the ancestral genetics of this population. Too often, genetic interpretations falter with ahistorical reconstructions.

Historical overview, current research, and emerging bioethical guidelines in researching the New York African burial ground.

Objectives: The issues addressed in this article are those related to the bioethical actions and decisions surrounding the excavation of the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG) in the 1990s, the significance of conducting research on historical African/African American remains, and the eminence of protecting newly discovered African American burial sites in the future for research purposes.

Materials And Methods: Skeletal (n = 419, at the time of excavation) and soil (n = 92) remains of the 17th and 18th century New York African Burial Ground were used to discuss the necessity of research on historical African/African American remains.

Discussion: Studying the remains of enslaved Africans is critical to understanding the biological processes and existence of all people.

Identification of trace metals and potential anthropogenic influences on the historic New York African Burial Ground population: A pXRF technology approach.

The New York African Burial Ground (NYABG) is the country's oldest and largest burial site of free and enslaved Africans. Re-discovered in 1991, this site provided evidence of the biological and cultural existence of a 17 and 18 Century historic population viewing their skeletal remains. However, the skeletal remains were reburied in October 2003 and are unavailable for further investigation.

Including Vulnerable Populations in the Assessment of Data From Vulnerable Populations.

Data science has made great strides in harnessing the power of big data to improve human life across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Unfortunately this informational richesse is not equitably spread across human populations. Vulnerable populations remain both under-studied and under-consulted on the use of data derived from their communities.

Discovery of rare variants implicated in schizophrenia using next-generation sequencing.

Schizophrenia is a highly heritable psychiatric disorder that affects 1% of the population. Genome-wide association studies have identified common variants in candidate genes associated with schizophrenia, but the genetics mechanisms of this disorder have not yet been elucidated. The discovery of rare genetic variants that contribute to schizophrenia symptoms promises to help explain the missing heritability of the disease.

Cancer in an Historic Washington DC African American Population and Its Geospatial Distribution.

Cancer continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the African American community but insights into the types and incidence of cancer 85 years ago have been virtually non-existent and little is known of its geospatial distribution. Historical information on cancer can shed light on current health disparities, particularly among African Americans. The aims of this study were to: (1) assess the frequencies of the cancer types present among Cobb Collection individuals; (2) compare these data with current research on cancer in African Americans; and (3) evaluate the pattern of cancer expression, including its geospatial distributions, as a cause of death between 1931 and 1969 in an historic African American subgroup and compare this pattern with the historic and contemporary patterns of cancer etiology and incidence.

What could you do with 400 years of biological history on african americans? Evaluating the potential scientific benefit of systematic studies of dental and skeletal materials on African Americans from the 17th through 20th centuries.

Objectives: How important is it to be able to reconstruct the lives of a highly diverse, historically recent macroethnic group over the course of 400 years? How many insights into human evolutionary biology and disease susceptibilities could be gained, even with this relatively recent window into the past? In this article, we explore the potential ramifications of a newly constructed dataset of Four Centuries of African American Biological Variation (4Cs).

Methods: This article provides initial lists of digitized variables formatted as SQL tables for the 17th and 18th century samples and for the 19th and 20th century samples.

Results: This database is dynamic and new information is added yearly.

Gene-environment interactions in human health: case studies and strategies for developing new paradigms and research methodologies.

THE SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS OF GENES AND THE ENVIRONMENT ON HEALTH ARE EXPLORED IN THREE CASE STUDIES: adult lactase persistence, autism spectrum disorders, and the metabolic syndrome, providing examples of the interactive complexities underlying these phenotypes. Since the phenotypes are the initial targets of evolutionary processes, understanding the specific environmental contexts of the genetic, epigenetic, and environmental changes associated with these phenotypes is essential in predicting their health implications. Robust databases must be developed on the local scale to deconstruct both the population substructure and the unique components of the environment that stimulate geographically specific changes in gene expression patterns.

Conceptual shifts needed to understand the dynamic interactions of genes, environment, epigenetics, social processes, and behavioral choices.

Social and behavioral research in public health is often intimately tied to profound, but frequently neglected, biological influences from underlying genetic, environmental, and epigenetic events. The dynamic interplay between the life, social, and behavioral sciences often remains underappreciated and underutilized in addressing complex diseases and disorders and in developing effective remediation strategies. Using a case-study format, we present examples as to how the inclusion of genetic, environmental, and epigenetic data can augment social and behavioral health research by expanding the parameters of such studies, adding specificity to phenotypic assessments, and providing additional internal control in comparative studies.

Worldwide distribution of allelic variation at the progesterone receptor locus and the incidence of female reproductive cancers.

Objectives: Global patterns of the incidence of cancer are often attributed to environmental and lifestyle differences between regions. Less attention has been given to global patterns of allelic variation of genes that may contribute to the risk of developing cancer.

Methods: We genotyped samples from 21 populations for four variants of the progesterone receptor (PR) gene.

Ancestral links of Chesapeake Bay region African Americans to specific Bight of Bonny (West Africa) microethnic groups and increased frequency of aggressive breast cancer in both regions.

The high frequency of aggressive, early onset, and highly fatal breast cancer among Chesapeake Bay region African Americans suggests that there may be a contributing ancestral component. This study identifies the region's founding African, European, and Native American Indian populations using ethnogenetic layering and identifies the microethnic substructure of each founding continental aggregate. The largest component (38%) of the enslaved Africans brought to the Chesapeake Bay originally came from the coastal and hinterlands of the Bight of Bonny, a region with very high rates of aggressive, early onset breast cancer.

African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups.

Background: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes have become popular tools for tracing maternal ancestry, and several companies offer this service to the general public. Numerous studies have demonstrated that human mtDNA haplotypes can be used with confidence to identify the continent where the haplotype originated. Ideally, mtDNA haplotypes could also be used to identify a particular country or ethnic group from which the maternal ancestor emanated.

Illuminating cancer health disparities using ethnogenetic layering (EL) and phenotype segregation network analysis (PSNA).

Background: Resolving cancer health disparities continues to befuddle simplistic racial models. The racial groups alluded to in biomedicine, public health, and epidemiology are often profoundly substructured.

Methods: EL and PSNA are computational assisted techniques that focus on microethnic group (MEG) substructure.