Million Veteran Program Bridges Diversity Gap in Genome-Wide Association Studies

Inside Precision Medicine July 19, 2024
IPM Staff

In 2020, non-Hispanic Whites made up 57.8 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2021, researchers estimated the proportion of samples from individuals of European ancestry they included in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to be 86.3 percent. Researchers have now published the results of a GWAS using samples from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Million Veteran Program (MVP) that includes more than 635,000 samples—29 percent of them from individuals of color, i.e. those who do not self-identify as non-Hispanic White.

“Diversity is critical in advancing genomic studies, providing foundational data for downstream implementation ranging from risk prediction to targeted therapeutics,” wrote a group of 66 authors in the paper appearing in the...

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