Genetic and environmental determinants of the susceptibility of Amerindian derived populations for having hypertriglyceridemia

Here, we discuss potential explanations for the higher prevalence of hypertriglyceridemia in Received 21 January 2014 populations with an Amerindian background. Although environmental factors are the Accepted 25 March 2014 triggers, the search for the ethnic related factors that explain the increased susceptibility of the Amerindians is a promising area for research. The study of the genetics of Keywords: hypertriglyceridemia in Hispanic populations faces several challenges. Ethnicity could be Hispanics a major confounding variable to prove genetic associations. Despite that, the study of Latin America hypertriglyceridemia in Hispanics has resulted in significant contributions. Two GWAS Triglycerides reports have exclusively included Mexican mestizos. Fifty percent of the associations reported in Caucasians could be generalized to the Mexicans, but in many cases the Mexican lead SNP was different than that reported in Europeans. Both reports included new associations with apo B or triglycerides concentrations. The frequency of susceptibility alleles in Mexicans is higher than that found in Europeans for several of the genes with the greatest effect on triglycerides levels. An example is the SNP rs964184 in APOA5. The same trend was observed for ANGPTL3 and TIMD4 variants. In summary, we postulate that the study of the genetic determinants of hypertriglyceridemia in Amerindian populations which have major changes in their lifestyle, may prove to be a great resource to identify new genes and pathways associated with hypertriglyceridemia. (c) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.