Just in time for Kidney Month, @AllofUsResearch has published a Research Highlight on recent findings made possible by the All of Us dataset! Check out the study, which yielded new insight into how APOL1 variants affect the risk of #KidneyDisease: allof-us.org/3OGgPPS
Thank you All of Us for this vital new research that identifies disease-triggering alleles on the APOL1 gene for kidney disease. As an evolutionary historian, I would like to suggest a meaningful clue that may help establish an even more vital function of the G1 and G2 variants of APOL1 carried by African-Americans than merely Trypanosomiasis immunity. Their ancestors inhabited the deep interior of West Africa, which geologists now identify as one of the most sodium deficient regions of the world. This population survived the sweltering heat of the tropics on a sodium intake of 200 mg/day, which western researchers had until recently believed to be incapable with life. These populations had in most cases never tasted table salt, and flavored their food with the burnt ashes of millet and other vegetable leaves. How was that possible? Their survival was dependent on the G1 and G2 variants of the APOL1 gene. This is because these variants are 25% to 50% more retentive of sodium than APOL1 variants found n coastal West Africans, Americans and other human populations with median consumption patterns of 3400-5000 mg/sodium/day. African-Americans suffer from unusually high rates of salt-sensitive hypertension, strokes, and kidney disease. All of these diseases have been linked to the over-consumption of sodium. The etiology of these health disparities are more likely related to their ancestors' translocation from a 200/mg/day intake to America's 3400-5000/mg intake. Recognizing these clues might in fact create a rather simple therapeutic approach to prevention of these diseases. America's one-size-fits-all nutritional paradigm may, in fact, be contributing to Blacks' high risk of the aforementioned sodium metabolic diseases. What nutritionists would consider a healthy low-sodium diet for most Americans (2300 mg/day) might even be 1000 mg/higher than what the far more sodium-efficient kidneys of Blacks can handle in many cases. hup.harvard.edu/books/97806742…