Document Type
Article
Original Publication Date
2010
Journal/Book/Conference Title
PLOS ONE
Volume
5
DOI of Original Publication
10.1371/journal.pone.0012391
Date of Submission
November 2014
Abstract
Preterm birth is more prevalent in African Americans than European Americans and contributes to 3.4 times more African American infant deaths. Models of social inequity do not appreciably account for this marked disparity and molecular genetic studies have yet to characterize whether allelic differences that exist between races contribute to this gap. In this study, biometrical genetic models are applied to a large mixed-race sample consisting of 733,339 births to measure the extent that heritable factors and environmental exposures predict the timing of birth and explain differences between racial groups. Although we expected significant differences in mean gestational age between racial groups, we did not anticipate the variance of gestational age in African Americans (σ2 = 7.097) to be nearly twice that of European Americans (σ2 = 3.764). Our results show that this difference in the variance of gestational age can largely be attributed to environmental sources; which were 3.1 times greater in African Americans. Specifically, environmental factors that change between pregnancies, versus exposures that influence all pregnancies within a family, are largely responsible for the increased reproductive heterogeneity observed in African American mothers. Although the contribution of both fetal and maternal genetic factors differed between race categories, genetic studies may best be directed to understanding the differences in the socio-cultural sources of this heterogeneity, and their possible interaction with genetic differences within and between races. This study provides a comprehensive description of the relative genetic and environmental contributions to racial differences in gestational age.
Rights
© 2010 York et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Is Part Of
VCU Human and Molecular Genetics Publications
Comments
Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012391