Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34815885›Full record

ReviewEvolution, medicine, and public health2021

Race and genetics versus 'race' in genetics: A systematic review of the use of African ancestry in genetic studies.

Theresa M Duello, Shawna Rivedal, Colton Wickland, Annika Weller

Erratum issuedOpen access · goldAbstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 52 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
52citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
10.7field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

52 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 97 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Trial
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Review
  12. Article
  13. Impact of racialization on neuroimaging and plasma biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025
    Article
  14. Adherence to unilateral hypoglossal nerve stimulation and changes in Epworth Sleepiness Scale scores.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2025
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Practical Considerations for Sharing Race-Based Genetic Research Findings.Journal of the American Society of Nephrology : JASN · 2025
    Article
  17. Review
  18. Review
  19. Principles and Policy Recommendations for Comprehensive Genetic Data Governance.Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society · 2025
    Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Theresa M DuelloDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4171-474X
Shawna RivedalDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Colton WicklandDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Annika WellerDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
University of Wisconsin–Madison · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Social scientists have long understood race to be a social category invented to justify slavery and evolutionary biologists know the socially constructed racial categories do not align with our biological understanding of genetic variation. The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 confirmed humans are 99.9% identical at the DNA level and there is no genetic basis for race. A systematic review of the PubMed medical literature published since 2003 was conducted to assess the use of African ancestry to denote study populations in genetic studies categorized as clinical trials, to examine the stated rationale for its use and to assess the use of evolutionary principles to explain human genetic diversity. We searched for papers that included the terms 'African', 'African American' or 'Black' in studies of behavior (20 papers), physiological responses, the pharmacokinetics of drugs and/or disease associations (62 papers), and as a genetic category in studies, including the examination of genotypes associated with life stress, pain, stuttering and drug clearance (126 papers). Of these, we identified 74 studies in which self-reported race alone or in combination with admixture mapping was used to define the study population. However, none of these studies provided a genetic explanation for the use of the self-identified race as a genetic category and only seven proffered evolutionary explanations of their data. The concept of continuous genetic variation was not clearly articulated in any of these papers, presumably due to the paucity of evolutionary science in the college and medical school curricula.

Indexed as

African AmericanAfrican ancestryblackclinical trialsevolutionary biologygenetic variation

Identifiers

PMID34815885
PMCPMC8604262
OpenAlexW3171258943

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.