New publication: Genetic ancestry in Mexican-Americans

We are happy to announce a new publication investigating the relationship between Native American ancestry, BMI, and diabetes risk among Mexican Americans:

Hao Hu, Chad Huff, Yuko Yamamura, Xifeng Wu, Sara S. Strom: The Relationship between Native American Ancestry, Body Mass Index and Diabetes Risk among Mexican-Americans. In: PLoS One, vol. 10, no. 10, 2015.

In this paper, we collected ancestry informative marker data from 4,662 Mexican Americans living in Houston, Texas. Our results show that individuals in this population with higher proportions of Native American ancestry were significantly less likely to be obese, but counter-intuitively, were at higher risk of developing diabetes. The study offers new insight into the complex relationship between obesity, genetic ancestry, and diabetes risk in Mexican Americans. Thanks to our collaborators and to the participants in the Mexican American Cohort at MD Anderson.