Univeristy of Florida: It’s no secret that discrimination is stressful for those who
experience it, but turns out the issue is more than skin deep—these
stressors can interact with our genetics to negatively impact our
health, a new University of Florida study shows. Study researchers developed a novel measure of unfair treatment to
study the effects of discrimination on health, particularly with respect
to racial disparities in complex diseases, which are illnesses
resulting from both genetic and environmental factors. They used the
measure to investigate hypertension, which is more prevalent in
African-Americans, and found that discrimination interacts with certain
genetic variants to alter blood pressure.
