engleski

Inbreeding and Health Outcomes in Rural Mediterranean Community

Isolate rural communities provide unique opportunities to explore genetic variation effects on population structure, but they also represent suitable settings for genetic studies of complex diseases. In such communities, at least two factors have major importance in determining the incidence and prevalence of polygenetically determined diseases – one is known as “the founder effect”, and another as “inbreeding”. Also, it is of great importance to analyze the influence of sociocultural, economical, demographic and ethnohistorical data on the patterns of longevity demonstrated by some specific isolate subpopulations as well as their cohorts. Such studies provide insight into some basic models and patterns of population structure, which is later reflected in its epidemiological, genetic and basic medical characteristics. This study was concerned with nine rural populations of the Island of Hvar, Croatia, that are typical Mediteranean communities. An attempt was made to correlate the populations genetic peculiarities reflected in traits such as erythrocyte polymorphysms, studied more than 20 years earlier, with current medical status of the studied populations. The aim was to investigate if the persons from the sample who died of some complex disease were more inbred than is the rest of the sample. This was determined by calculating inbreeding coefficients in the populations for the deficite of heterozygotes with respect to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium expectations.

inbreeding; health; rural Mediterranean community; anthropology; population genetics

nije evidentirano