Study: Racism in America destroys black genes and shortens their lives

Negative social attitudes such as racism and discrimination are harming victims' health by launching a series of abnormal biological responses - including unusual genetic activity - and causing premature aging and organ damage, Newsweek reported.

Prof. Abril Themes, a professor of psychology and psychology at the University of Southern California, said reports documenting age and cause of death show a clear pattern: short-lived African Americans with many diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, dementia, and breast cancer more often than whites.

She said in an article in the magazine that scientists looked for genetic causes of health differences between blacks and whites, but did not find an answer, adding that the strongest scientific evidence to date to explain these differences refers to environmental and social factors such as poverty, discrimination in health care and racism.

Inflammation and racism
A recent study co-organized by the author showed that racism promotes genes that cause inflammation, one of the main causes of the disease.

Although racism may be less clear today than it was in the early 20th century, government policies and regulations, unfair treatment by social institutions, stereotypes, and discrimination are compelling evidence that racism is still alive and contributing to premature mortality as well as low Quality of life.

She cited many examples of blacks currently being discriminated against, including being more likely than whites to be tested for drugs, although overdose rates were higher for whites, and blacks were more likely to refuse to sell homes because of race.

Between health and racism
As scientists, they did not know until recently the mechanism linking racism and health, she said, adding that a new study by she and her colleagues showed that the function of genes might explain the relationship, proving that genes that help inflammation appear more often in blacks than eggs. She and her colleagues believed that racism was the cause.

She pointed out that they had already explained how activating racism, such as asking people to write down their sex before any test or examination, could impair brain functions such as learning, memory and problem-solving in African Americans, adding that this might partly explain the high rates of dementia among African Americans compared with eggs.

Researchers have documented that chronic stress changes brain function, such as hippocampus, which targets brain diseases such as Alzheimer's.This work has been expanded through social genetics, which shows how gene function is affected by social conditions.

Fungal immunity
Themis said that certain marginalized groups showed abnormal patterns of activity of genes responsible for innate immunity, which is resistant to foreign pathogens.

When pressures around the environment, such as poverty and racism, activate the sympathetic nervous system, which controls defense or escape responses, the behavior of genes changes, which in turn causes complex biochemical events that trigger genes, she said. Bad health results.

The authors concluded that they found that blacks and whites differed in the way in which inflammatory-promoting genes and stress signals are operated, and described their findings as important because chronic infections cause body aging and organ damage.