Ecogenetics diseases

Abstract: Public health genetics is an exciting interdisciplinary area that brings all the public health sciences to bear on the emerging challenge of interpreting the medical and public health significance of genetic variation within populations. Sequencing of the human genome will generate an avalanche of genetic information to be linked with information about microbial, chemical, and physical exposures; nutrition, metabolism, lifestyle behaviors, and medications. The public health genetics mini-symposium in this volume includes articles dealing with educational innovations, host-pathogen interactions in infectious diseases, nutrition/genetic interactions in cancers, and population screening for hemochromatosis. Additional topics addressed here are ecogenetics and risk assessment, the genetics of unhealthful behaviors, and ethical and policy issues. Finally, a set of principles for community-based health research in populations is presented as a public health-oriented counterpart to the principle of autonomy and the practice of informed consent that have become key elements of ethics in medical care and medical research with individuals.

Abstract: The study of pharmacogenetics and ecogenetics among different individuals and populations offers an unique opportunity to understand multiple, simultaneously occurring interactions between genes and the environment, and the subsequent phenotypic expression of heritable characters. Incorporation of appropiate ecogenetic diagnostic services into the general genetic services may be useful for public health monitoring in the prevention of occupational disease. The modern methods of molecular biochemistry will allow the characterization of hereditary traits affecting drug metabolism at the DNA level. Gene identification, isolation and cloning will help to determine whether gene duplication and other such events have taken place leading to species differences in the metabolism of drugs and xenobiotics.

Abstract: Dit supplement van het tijdschrift Hunmn Genetics bevat de Proceedings van een internatiohale conferent ie (workshop) die in ok tober I977 in West-Duits land werd gehouden. Voor wat betreft de farmacogenet ica worden de genetische en farmacologische aspecten van glucose-6-fosfaatdehydrogenase-defici6ntie , van pseudo-cholinesterase-variat ie (suxamethonium), van geneesmiddel-acetyler ing (isoniazide, procainamide e.a.), van de omzet t ing van parathion in paraoxon, van hepatische porfyrie en van maligne hyper thermie, besproken. Verder wordt aandacht besteed aan de zogenaamde psychofarmacogenetica, waarbij allerlei factoren worden besproken die ten grondslag kunnen liggen aan de grote inter-individuele variatie in de effecten van psychofarmaca (bijvoorbeeld genetisch bepaalde verschillen in activiteit van dopamine-f l -hydroxylase en andere enzymen). Bij de 'ecogenet ica ' gaat bet enerzijds om genetisch bepaalde verschillen in reactie op giftige stoffen uit ons milieu: bi jvoorbeeld verschillen in gevoeligheid voor bepaalde kanke rverwekkende stoffen, die zouden zijn terug te voeren op verschiilen in activiteit van metaboliserende enzymsystemen. Anderzi jds gaat het hier om genetisch bepaalde variatie in reactie op voedseh bi jvoorbeeld ijzerabsorptie en hyperlipidemie. Een zeer interessant boekje dat veel informarie bevat voor een ieder die geinteresseerd is in inter-individuele variatie van biologische verschijnselen in het a lgemeen en van effecten van geneesmiddelen in het bijzonder. Van belang is dat dit type gegevens meestal erg verspreid in de medische l i teratuur voorkomt, terwijl het nu keurig op een rijtje is gezet.

Abstract: CANCER ECOGENETICS Are cancer epidemiologists ready for molecular geneticists? This could have been the subtitle of a workshop, 'Genetic and Environmental Factors in Etiologic Studies of Cancer,' a European regional scientific meeting of the International Epidemiology Association, held in Reykjavik, Iceland, 13-15 June 1986. Under scrutiny was the intersection of two apparently contradictory trends in research on the origins of human cancer. On the one hand, cancer, at least at the level of the cell, is a genetic disease. Most tumours have chromosomal abnormalities and, if the cancer cell did not pass on to its progeny new rules for bad cellular behaviour, cancer would not be a lethal disease. A score of oncogenes, discovered by laboratory scientists pursuing the hypothesis that cancer is an infectious disease, gave further insight that DNA sequences, long part of the human genome, could become activated and result in clinical cancer. Studies of cancer genetics proceeded mostly in laboratories, apart from any epidemiological assessment of potential environmental influences. On the other hand, it is often said that 80 to 90% of human cancers are due to environmental factors, ncluding behavioural ones such as personal diet. GeojTaphical and temporal differences of cancer rates, jccupational cancers, and, most compellingly, epilemiological studies of cancer in migrant populations eft little apparent role for the action of genes that night predispose to cancer. Hence, two decades of ase-control studies have tried to identify specific invironmental factors in cancer aetiology. Nearly all of hese studies failed to collect data or specimens that xjuld be used to address genetic hypotheses of cancer letiology.