What noticeable disparities are there in specific disease rates in different countries/regions?

Factual Questions
1

I could swear I heard on NPR a while back (searching the site, I can’t find it) that Asian women and Asian-American women have strikingly different rates of breast cancer. Another link on NPR that I cannot find but am almost 100% sure I heard (I need to start a searching NPR thread) was that Koreans have significantly lower rates of a number of diseases and they think (of course) it’s related to Kimchi, even though they have a higher rate of gastric cancer I believe. Finally, last night on the Daily Show, they talked to the author of this book on, and he mentioned that the people who are the subject of the book have almost no instances of a large number of the diseases we face in huge numbers.

Does anyone know anything about these sorts of disparities, and are there any other instances of places that have significantly lower or higher instances of a certain disease?

I’m more interested in non-contagious diseases.

2

Really? Nothing? Or did I just post this into one of those vacuous moments where one group is just waking up and the other is going to sleep? Though this would be interesting.

3

There’s masses of information on this, involving loads of places, loads of ethnicities and loads of diseases. Epidemiologists love this stuff. You’ll need to ask a much more focussed question, though, to get anything useful.

4

To be honest, I don’t know how much more specific I need to be. I’m asking what diseases (specifically the big ones like cancer, heart disease, etc.) are noticeably elevated or rare in certain regions or among certain cultures. What would help to make that more precise?

5

Well, I think the majority of diseases - certainly including heart disease, and most cancers - have markedly different incidences in different populations. Given that the causes of most diseases include either genetic factors or environmental factors or both, you would expect that there would be different experiences among different populations living in different places.

A more interesting question, and one which I suspect would have a shorter answer, would be what are the diseases which appear to have a uniform incidence in all populations?

6

Or simply a few prominent examples of diseases with different racial prevalences. I mean most trivially, sickle-cell anemia is found mainly among sub-Saharan Africans, and Tay Sachs disease is prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. For major diseases I’ll have to defer to another poster.

7

Pick almost any disease, and you will find variations in the incidence of the disease for different populations. Take multiple sclerosis, for example. The further you live from the Equator, the less likely you are to develop MS. Even controlling for this factor, certain ethnic appear to have a very low incidence, including black Africans, Maoris and native Americans. And Japanese people, if I recall correctly, develop only one form of the disease.

Or take gout. Pacific Islanders and Maoris have a higher-than-average propensity to gout, but it is quite rare in Australian aboriginals. Black Americans have a higher incidence than Americans of European descent. But, if you’ve already got MS, then your chances of developing gout are reduced.

Even with highly infectious diseases, there are differences between populations. In the West we think of chicken pox as a disease of childhoold, and we expect that a child exposed to it will likely develop it. In India, however, children exposed to chicken pox generally do not develop it (but they develop it later when exposed as young adults).

8

I vaguely recalled some local newspaper item sadly saying that Scotland seems to have some of the highest rates of Multiple Sclerosis in the world. No idea where I read it, but it does seem to increase with distance, either north or south, from the Equator. Not sure if that is the sort of thing the OP is looking for.

Here is a world map with pretty colours: Cosmetic Surgery & Plastic Surgery Specialists | Flawless

Good grief - there’s a bit from the above link suggesting that poor old Orkney and Shetland have the highest rates of M.S. in the world. :eek:

9

I dont know if this if still the case, but for many years Utah had the longest average life expectancy in the US, while neighboring Nevada (which has mostly similar geography and climate) had the shortest average life spans…

The Mormon lifestyle (no tobacco, alcohol, coffee) was usually given credit for the difference. (though there is a fairly large Mormon population in Nevada)

10

Oops. I see UDS brought up MS while I was slowly posting. Past my bedtime and my computer’s, I suppose. :slight_smile:

11

Cervical cancer is higher in Latin America than many other places. In Panama there is a particularly high rate in one province, Herrera.

12

Poorer countries tend to have:

  1. More STDs as condoms and education come at a premium.
  2. Diseases based on malnutrition like rickets.
  3. Infectious diseases like TB and malaria spreads more easily because lack of healthcare and poor sanitation.
  4. Diseases rich countries dont get because of vaccines like polio.

Specifically, ignoring income level:

African Americans are at risk for hypertension and kidney problems because of genetics.

Sickle cell anemaaffects all sorts of people from malaria prone countries.

Cystic Fibrosis affects white people and hispanics much more than blacks and asians.

Mediterranean people get thalassemia.

Ashkenazi Jews are pront to Niemann–Pick.

Im sure there are dozens of other examples. Try googling for genetic diseases and race.