Friday, January 07, 2005
Resistance
While most research focuses on how to kill HIV, another critical part of the battle is understanding how it works, and why different people are more or less susceptible. A new study from the NIH finds that an increased number of copies of the gene CCL3L1 makes a person more resistant to HIV than people with fewer copies. They found that African-Americans had an average of four copies whereas European-Americans had an average of 2-3, but apparently not that European-Americans were more susceptible than African-Americans.
This last bit confuses the hell out of me. I mean, I understand from a statistical perspective how that can happen, but it doesn't make sense. There should be a protective effect across populations, shouldn't there? Any help from the epidemiology crowd here?
This last bit confuses the hell out of me. I mean, I understand from a statistical perspective how that can happen, but it doesn't make sense. There should be a protective effect across populations, shouldn't there? Any help from the epidemiology crowd here?
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