More proof that racial differences are "socially constructed" (NOT)

A major genetic risk factor for prostate cancer has been discovered by scientists. It potentially explains why Africans are more likely to develop the disease than Europeans. Tests on thousands of men with and without the disease found a genetic fingerprint that appears highly associated with the disease. The marker, where a portion of the genetic code containing a number of segments repeat themselves, could help find a cure for the disease. The only firmly established risk factors for prostate cancer are age, family history, and ethnicity. Although a genetic link to the disease has long been suspected, proving it has been difficult.

Now scientists have pinned down one variant of this piece of the genome on Chromosome 8, one of the strings of DNA in which the genetic code is written, is linked to 8 per cent of prostate cancers in Europeans and 16 per cent in people of African descent. Africans are 1.6 times more likely to develop prostate cancer than Europeans, and 2.4 times more likely to die from the disease. The new findings, published in the journal Nature Genetics, suggest the Chromosome 8 variant not only plays a role in aggressive cancers but may be largely responsible for the ethnic differences.

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