ARE THE MEXICAN AMERICANS BEING SAVED BY THEIR INDIAN BLOOD ADMIXTURE ? IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
I have had the pleasure of visiting Indigenous groups in most of the countries in the American Continent with the exception of Nicaragua in Central America and Surinam, French Guyana and Paraguay in South America. They are the original inhabitants of this continent and the European footprint is quite recent , with the arrival of Cristobal Colon in 1492. The early visitors were mainly soldiers, sailors, adventurers and conquistadores on behalf of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns and later the British and the French. A local creole culture blossomed, with the birth and acculturation of the Invaders and Immigrants. It is only natural that there would be genetic admixture as the Immigrants from Europe and slaves and freed men from Africa mingled with the local native population.
I have always felt a strong bond with Mexico, began with my frequent visits to Yucatan during my years at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Of course, one gets to learn about the Mayans and the Olmecs, the Big Heads and warriors Toltecs at Chichen Itza and then later on about other groups of Meso America including Azteca.
In 1515, the Indians of Mexico lost their freedom and the memory of their ancestors are deeply etched in their faces. While many of the original cultures have disappeared, there are still millions of indigenous peoples in Mexico. I have been fortunate to visit many indigenous Mexicans, from the transplanted Kickapoo in Coahuila to Lacondones near Guatemalan border. The majority of the Mexican population carries with them the genetic memory of the Mexican Indians.
The theme I wanted to explore, which had never occurred to me before today, was the lung disease susceptibility of Mexican-Americans to the current pandemic virus Corona.
I was so excited to read about the research of Dr. Esteban Burchard at UCSF, and the more I read about his work and his collaborators at Stanford and Mexico, it read like a detective story to me. And fortunately, the short UCSF write about his lab (multi-genetic by the look of the photo), provided the clue to what I was looking for. Are the Mexican-Americans dying LESS of Lung complications from Covid-19?
In the most comprehensive genetic study of the Mexican population to date, researchers from UC San Francisco and Stanford University, along with Mexico’s National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), have identified tremendous genetic diversity, reflecting thousands of years of separation among local populations and shedding light on a range of confounding aspects of Latino health.
The study, which documented nearly 1 million genetic variants among more than 1,000 individuals, unveiled genetic differences as extensive as the variations between some Europeans and Asians, indicating populations that have been isolated for hundreds to thousands of years.
These differences offer an explanation for the wide variety of health factors among Latinos of Mexican descent, including differing rates of breast cancer and asthma, as well as therapeutic response. Results of the study, on which UCSF and Stanford shared both first and senior authors, appear in the June 13 online edition of the journal Science.
The genetics of Mexico recapitulates Native American substructure and affects biomedical traits
Published in Science
(the above taken from an article for UCSF by Kristen Bole)
The current pandemic which has taken on gargantuan proportions in the USA (which the native people call the Turtle Island) has swallowed up a lot of people, thousands of people.
When I heard of a young black man in his thirties (type 1 diabetes) dying just a few days after a fraternity reunion, I wanted to look into the “Black Death” (no pun intended).
Felt so sad, that the black people were dying disproportionately
I am a Physician (Endocrinologist) as well as a Medical Anthropologist. The fear mongering nature of the TV in America with doomsayers predicting the worst. USA is the only country where scientists and researchers are disregarded and politicians and some of their appointees (like the black surgeon general) disgorge an array of misinformation and leave behind them a slippery path of confusion. I thought how well Germany and Austria confronted this pandemic with very little loss of life whereas USA has decided to follow the Italian route.
Just as opposed to the genetic variations that the illustrious doctor from UCSF is studying, American politicians have come up with a “racial” term called Hispanics, which has absolutely no cultural meaning at all but can be manipulated politically very well, I know it as I commute between Havana and Miami.
My wealthy Jewish friends from Panama are counted as Hispanics whereas my professor friends from USP in Sao Paolo are not. Hispanic was defined as persons with Spanish surnames and has some connection with Spain or Spanish America. My Polynesian friends from Rapa Nui hold Chilean passports and they are considered Hispanics! Whereas Xingu from the Amazonas won’t be.
I have been trying to understand this pandemic in numbers and not listen to the news on TV (except BBC from London and Al Jazeera from Doha despite their anti-Israeli slant, but I have a soft spot for Qatar, where Cuba staffs an entire five-star hospital!)
Suddenly a question pops up in my head late last night. What about Mexican Americans. You may know that the majority of Cubans who live in Miami are white (in Miami, a distinct Mulatto culture does not exist) and considered Hispanic. You won’t see too many Mexicans in Miami and if you want a Fajita, better head off to Orlando or Homestead.
New York state, predominantly New York City has a rate of death of 669/100 000 population, Florida 85/100 000. NY state “Hispanics” are mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, what is called Non-white Hispanics, with a high proportion of African admixture. The Hispanic population in New York City consists of 1/3 PR, 1/3 RD and of the remaining 1/3 the majority are Central and South Americans with Mexicans comprising just 14% of the total “Hispanic” population.
A study had been published using data from:
99 counties in 14 states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Utah), distributed across all 10 U.S Department of Health and Human Services regions.§ The catchment area represents approximately 10% of the U.S. population
In the COVID-NET catchment population, approximately 49% of residents are male and 51% of residents are female, whereas 54% of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations occurred in males and 46% occurred in females. These data suggest that males may be disproportionately affected by COVID-19 compared with females. Similarly, in the COVID-NET catchment population, approximately 59% of residents are white, 18% are black, and 14% are Hispanic; however, among 580 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with race/ethnicity data, approximately 45% were white, 33% were black, and 8% were Hispanic, suggesting that black populations might be disproportionately affected by COVID-19. (Copied from the article)
I was frankly a little excited, Mexicans were dying less than the others proportionately. 14% of the population classified as “Hispanic” and the death rate much less proportionately at 8%
Crudely, the four states of great interest for me from the point of view of this note were
New York 669/100 000 “Black Hispanics”
Florida 85 /100 000 “white Hispanics”
Texas 41 and California 52
Where do a whole heap of Mexican Americans live ? Texas and California
I have travelled more in Texas than California and I can tell you that it comes very handy to be able to speak Spanish one you head south from San Antonio towards La frontera.
The study also revealed a dramatic difference in lung capacity between mestizo individuals with western indigenous Mexican ancestry and those with eastern ancestry, to the degree that in a lung test of two equally healthy people of the same age, someone from the west could appear to be a decade younger than a Yucatan counterpart. Burchard said this was clinically significant and could have important implications in diagnosing lung disease.
Significantly, the study found that these genetic origins correlated directly to lung function in modern Mexican-Americans (from UCSF article)
This is where the article published in SCIENCE and the work about genetic diversity comes in handy. I have no demographic data but in general I would imagine the Californians and Texan Americans of Mexican descent come from the western part of Mexico ? I have spent time with the Mayans and I don’t remember seeing too many of them in the malls of San Antonio.
So, in a most amateur fashion, I began to feel that being Mexican American, perhaps of a certain Indian genetic background would be protective against Lung conditions ? or death caused by failure of other organs ? I have a selfish interest in this matter, as I work exclusively with Indian tribes in North America.
I felt an inner joy that the hundreds of Indians that I know in various states in the USA may be spared of this grim reaper.
Corona virus is related to the SARS viruses and also to the virus that causes “Flu”? so why not look up the data for mortality for FLU in the USA by “races” (PS in France when a child is born, neither RACE nor RELIGION is noted. While Mohammed is the most common name of boys born in France (and Belgium and Vienna and Oslo) in recent years, the French can’t tell you how many are Muslims.. ah well)
FLU deaths in 2017
Blacks. 881/100 000 population
White. 755/100 000
HISPANICS. 524/100 000
Viola, Hispanics die less proportionately and could it be due to their American Indian heritage ? I hope so and pray for the elders of the various tribes that I have been associated with, in my multiple visits to USA.
A little bit of trivia to end this note, which I thoroughly enjoyed writing.
Did you know that using the data collected 2006-2017,
HISPANIC female had the highest longevity in the USA ?
84.3
Followed by Hispanic Male 79.1. White Male 78.1 Black Male 71.5
Ah well, time for a dinner at the time of social distancing
(Jamaican escovitch fish and festival), Kim Crawford from NZ (Aotearoa)
I did have one USA made food: Manischewitz Matzo.
