Abstract
East Asians, Asian Indians and Amerindians have a five to ten-fold lower age-adjusted incidence rate (AAIR) of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) compared with persons of predominately European descent. The data we review suggest a genetic rather than environmental basis for this discordance. All these populations arose from a common African Black ancestor but different clades have different admixture with archaic hominins including Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo erectus, which may explain different CLL incidences. There are also some differences in clinical laboratory and molecular co-variates of CLL between these populations. Because the true age-adjusted incidence rate in African Blacks is unknown it is not possible to determine whether modern Europeans acquired susceptibility to CLL or the other populations lost susceptibility and/or developed resistance to developing CLL. We also found other B-cell lymphomas and T- and NK-cell cancers had different incidences in the populations we studied. These data provide clues to determining the cause(s) of CLL.
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Acknowledgements
Profs. Robin Foa’ (Universita “La Sapienza” di Roma), Kanti Rai (Northwell Health), Daniel Catovsky, Gerald Marti (National Institutes of Health) and Marc Goodman (Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre) kindly reviewed the typescript. RPG acknowledges support from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre funding scheme.
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Yang, S., Varghese, A.M., Sood, N. et al. Ethnic and geographic diversity of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Leukemia 35, 433–439 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41375-020-01057-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41375-020-01057-5
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