The Influence of Lifelong Learning on Life Satisfaction and Successful Aging in Older Adults: A Narrative Literature Review.

Purpose: To explore the association between lifelong learning (LL) and successful aging and discover ways that primary care nurses (PCNs) may facilitate successful aging by promoting LL.

Method: A narrative review of international evidence from Google Scholar, PubMed, CINAHL Plus, Ovid, and ProQuest was conducted. Twenty-one articles were reviewed.

Genes, Race, and Causation: US Public Perspectives About Racial Difference.

Concerns have been raised that the increase in popular interest in genetics may herald a new era within which racial inequities are seen as 'natural' or immutable. In the following study, we provide data from a nationally representative survey on how the US population perceives general ability, athleticism, and intellect being determined by race and/or genetics and whether they believe racial health inequities to be primarily the product of genetic or social factors. We find that self-described race is of primary importance in attributing general ability to race, increasing age is a significant factor in attributing athleticism and intellect to genes and race, and education is a significant factor in decreasing such racially and genetically deterministic views .

Barriers and Strategies Related to Qualitative Research on Genetic Ancestry Testing in Indigenous Communities.

Conducting genetics-related research with populations that have historically experienced considerable harm and little benefit from genetics research poses unique challenges for understanding community-based perceptions of new genetic technologies. This article identifies challenges and strategies for collecting qualitative data on the perceptions of direct-to-consumer (DTC) Genetic Ancestry tests (GAT) among diverse Indigenous communities. Based on a 3-year project related to perceptions, attitudes, and values associated with genetic ancestry testing among diverse Indigenous communities in Oklahoma, the engagement process revealed specific opportunities to improve the process of qualitative data collection related to GAT, and more broadly, to conduct genetics-related research with Indigenous communities in culturally and methodologically appropriate ways.

Gut Microbiome Diversity among Cheyenne and Arapaho Individuals from Western Oklahoma.

Existing studies characterizing gut microbiome variation in the United States suffer from population ascertainment biases, with individuals of American Indian ancestry being among the most underrepresented. Here, we describe the first gut microbiome diversity study of an American Indian community. We partnered with the Cheyenne and Arapaho (C&A), federally recognized American Indian tribes in Oklahoma, and compared gut microbiome diversity and metabolic function of C&A participants to individuals of non-native ancestry in Oklahoma (NNIs).

Subsistence strategies in traditional societies distinguish gut microbiomes.

Recent studies suggest that gut microbiomes of urban-industrialized societies are different from those of traditional peoples. Here we examine the relationship between lifeways and gut microbiota through taxonomic and functional potential characterization of faecal samples from hunter-gatherer and traditional agriculturalist communities in Peru and an urban-industrialized community from the US. We find that in addition to taxonomic and metabolic differences between urban and traditional lifestyles, hunter-gatherers form a distinct sub-group among traditional peoples.

Insights from characterizing extinct human gut microbiomes.

In an effort to better understand the ancestral state of the human distal gut microbiome, we examine feces retrieved from archaeological contexts (coprolites). To accomplish this, we pyrosequenced the 16S rDNA V3 region from duplicate coprolite samples recovered from three archaeological sites, each representing a different depositional environment: Hinds Cave (~8000 years B.P.

The Human Microbiome Project: lessons from human genomics.

The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) is following in the footsteps of the Human Genome Project (HGP), which will include exciting discoveries, but also potential disappointment and resentment over the lack of medical applications. There is a wiser path for the HMP. This path includes a greater attention to rare variation, an early commitment to an ethical inclusion of indigenous communities, and a recruitment strategy in which medical benefits are de-emphasized.

Integrating common and rare genetic variation in diverse human populations.

Despite great progress in identifying genetic variants that influence human disease, most inherited risk remains unexplained. A more complete understanding requires genome-wide studies that fully examine less common alleles in populations with a wide range of ancestry. To inform the design and interpretation of such studies, we genotyped 1.

Regional differences in awareness and attitudes regarding genetic testing for disease risk and ancestry.

Little is known about the lay public's awareness and attitudes concerning genetic testing and what factors influence their perspectives. The existing literature focuses mainly on ethnic and socioeconomic differences; however, here we focus on how awareness and attitudes regarding genetic testing differ by geographical regions in the US. We compared awareness and attitudes concerning genetic testing for disease risk and ancestry among 452 adults (41% Black and 67% female) in four major US cities, Norman, OK; Cincinnati, OH; Harlem, NY; and Washington, DC; prior to their participation in genetic ancestry testing.

Evaluating the utility of personal genomic information.

In evaluating the utility of human genome-wide assays, the answer will differ depending on why the question is asked. For purposes of regulating medical tests, a restrictive sense of clinical utility is used, although it may be possible to have clinical utility without changing patient's outcomes and clinical utility may vary between patients. For purposes of using limited third party or public health resources, cost effectiveness should be evaluated in a societal rather than individual context.

Looking for race in all the wrong places: analyzing the lack of productivity in the ongoing debate about race and genetics.

The ongoing debate about the relationship between race and genetics is more than a century old and has yet to be resolved. Recent emphasis on population-based patterns in human genetic variation and the implications of those for disease susceptibility and drug response have revitalized that long-standing debate. Both sides in the debate use the same rhetorical device of treating geographic, ancestral, population-specific, and other categories as surrogates for race, but otherwise share no evidentiary standards, analytic frameworks, or scientific goals that might resolve the debate and result in some productive outcome.

Estimation of the prevalence of AIDS, opportunistic infections, and standard of care among patients with HIV/AIDS receiving care along the U.S.-Mexico border through the Special Projects of National Significance: a cross-sectional study.

There is high demand for care among the Hispanic population in states along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The contractual genome: how direct-to-consumer genomic services may help patients take ownership of their DNA.

The sequencing and genotyping of personal genomes by commercial services outside traditional clinical settings may help to shape the expectations of research subjects and patients regarding control of and responsibility for the information contained in their DNA. A greater sense of individual ownership of personal genomic information could replace overly complex and paternalistic institutional proxies for the protection of personal genotype and sequence data, and also could encourage research participants and patients to become better educated regarding genetic contributors to disease.

A second generation human haplotype map of over 3.1 million SNPs.

We describe the Phase II HapMap, which characterizes over 3.1 million human single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genotyped in 270 individuals from four geographically diverse populations and includes 25-35% of common SNP variation in the populations surveyed. The map is estimated to capture untyped common variation with an average maximum r2 of between 0.

Grappling with groups: protecting collective interests in biomedical research.

Strategies for protecting historically disadvantaged groups have been extensively debated in the context of genetic variation research, making this a useful starting point in examining the protection of social groups from harm resulting from biomedical research. We analyze research practices developed in response to concerns about the involvement of indigenous communities in studies of genetic variation and consider their potential application in other contexts. We highlight several conceptual ambiguities and practical challenges associated with the protection of group interests and argue that protectionist strategies developed in the context of genetic research will not be easily adapted to other types of research in which social groups are placed at risk.

Share and share alike: deciding how to distribute the scientific and social benefits of genomic data.

Emerging technologies make genomic analyses more efficient and less expensive, enabling genome-wide association and gene-environment interaction studies. In anticipation of their results, funding agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust are formulating guidelines for sharing the large amounts of genomic data that are generated by the projects that they sponsor. Data-sharing policies can have varying implications for how disease susceptibility and drug-response research will be pursued by the scientific community, and for who will benefit from the resulting medical discoveries.

Analyzing the use of race and ethnicity in biomedical research from a local community perspective.

Lost in the debate over the use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research is community-level analysis of how these categories function and influence health. Such analysis offers a powerful critique of national and transnational categories usually used in biomedical research such as "African-American" and "Native American." Ethnographic research on local African-American and Native American communities in Oklahoma shows the importance of community-level analysis.

Investments in cancer genomics: who benefits and who decides.

The Cancer Genome Atlas--formerly the Human Cancer Genome Project--provides an opportunity for considering how social concerns about resource allocation are interrelated with practical decisions about specific research strategies--part of a continuing convergence between scientific and public evaluations of priorities for biomedical research funding. For example, the manner, order, and extent that The Cancer Genome Atlas selects tumor types and populations to be sampled will determine who benefits most from its findings. Those choices will be determined on the basis of both scientific and social values.

Ethical issues in medical-sequencing research: implications of genotype-phenotype studies for individuals and populations.

Advances and declining costs in sequencing technology will result in increasing number of studies with individual sequence data linked to phenotypic information, which has been dubbed medical sequencing. At least some of this linked information will be publicly available. Medical sequencing raises ethical issues for both individuals and populations, including data release and identifiability, adequacy of consent, reporting research results, stereotyping and stigmatization, inclusion and differential benefit and culturally and community-specific concerns.

Will investments in large-scale prospective cohorts and biobanks limit our ability to discover weaker, less common genetic and environmental contributors to complex diseases?

Increasing the size of prospective cohorts and biobanks is one approach to discovering previously unknown contributors to complex diseases, but it may come at the price of concealing contributors that are less common across all the participants in those larger studies and of limiting hypothesis generation. Prospective cohorts and biobanks constitute significant, long-term investments in research infrastructure that will have ongoing consequences for opportunities in biomedical research for the foreseeable future. Thus, it is important to think about how these major additions to research infrastructure can be designed to be more productive in generating hypotheses for novel environmental contributors to complex diseases and to help identify genetic and environmental contributors that may not be common across the larger samples but are more frequent within local or ancestral subsets.