Indian population more vulnerable to HIV-AIDS

Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal released a study Genetic Landscape of the People of India: A Canvas for Disease Gene Exploration on Friday that carries an elaborate genetic information and surprising fact that people of India are more vulnerable to HIV-AIDS.

The study which was carried by the best brain including 150 scientists and researchers drawn from six Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories and various other institute across the country have produced genetic information on over 4000 genetic markers from over 1000 biomedically important and pharmacogenetically relevant genes in reference population representing diversity of population.

Sibal said that this study will help prepare ‘specific drug response/disease predisposition maps’ to help policy level decision making for drug dosage intervention and disease risk management.

Director General of CSIR Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari, who headed the study, said that this endeavor has made them to prepare a genetic profile of India’s population while stressing that there is a strong link between genetic and linguistic profiles of India.

He also mentioned genetic differences in the frequencies of disease-associated genetic markers, which he substantiated with the fact that the genetic marker HIV-1 is virtually absent in India which devoid Indian population of natural protection against deadly HIV-AIDS.

The study also mentioned that Indians do not represent homogeneity in terms of gene pool rather it shows variation.

It brings out an important revelation, which says, “There is a high-to-low gradient from north to south (India). These results are consistent with the observations by Majumder and Dey in 2001, and the antenatal clinical HIV prevalence survey (2005) that reports a high frequency of HIV in south Indian populations.”

“We note that the people of India are referred as 'Indian' in many population genetic studies. The implication of such usage is that the Indian population is genetically homogeneous, which, as the results of our study indicate, is evidently not true. However, we have also shown it is possible to identify large clusters of ethnic groups that have substantial genetic homogeneity,” it says.

Analysis of North and South Indian population divulged an important divergence in pattern of cardiovascular diseases which is more common in vegetarian population of North Indians unlike their South Indians counterpart. Also that North Indians have low level of vitamin B12.

Interestingly the tribal populations of eastern and northeastern parts of India were found more vulnerable to malaria.

A major aim of the project is to make predictions of both diseases as well as effectiveness of specific drugs used for various diseases.

These results have also provided the first set of insights into the processes of human adaptation to different types of environment in India.

The multi-million study which was taken up in 2003, has been published in the Journal Of Genetics in recent April issue. While there are several diseases in the line up including diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, cancer, Parkinson’s, chronic pancreatitis, malaria, glaucoma and retinitis pigmentosa. The study is aimed at making prediction as well as to find effectiveness of specific drugs used for treatment of various diseases.