Google Maps, Disease Risk, and Migration

First time accepted submitter ecorona writes "This Google Maps mashup was published in Science (paywall warning) this week. It shows genetic risk for multiple diseases distributed across the globe. It's easy to follow the migration path and see which diseases increase/decrease in risk along human migration paths. Click on the populations to see the relative risk of the selected disease for each population. You can pick your a disease and see which populations are more susceptible. The article is behind a paywall, but the website is free to use." On a similar note, an anonymous reader points out a British research project that "used Twitter to track and map flu-like illnesses across the U.K. to determine if epidemics were emerging. The research culminated into an online visual tool, the Flu Detector, that maps tweeted flu rates in several regions across the U.K."

Re:

[siddesu]

If they are red

Green maybe?

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

1. You figure out where your forefathers and foremothers come from. 2. you find that place on the mashup. 3. you click on the disease you're most afraid of. 3. you look at the circles that are around the lines that go through that place. If they are red, you should be afraid. If they are yellow or orange, you should be very afraid. If they are dark orange, just off yourself now. Hope this helps

According to the map, I've been dead six years.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're damned lucky, you died about the time the civilization peaked.

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[ecorona]

Red means higher risk and green means lower risk. There's a legend on the top left. Click on the circle that represents your ancestral origins. You can see the predicted increase in risk (likelihood ratio). It also traces the migration path your ancestors took to found your ancestral population. Click the other figure (Human Relationships) on the top left to see the same stuff but on a view that shows how all relationships on the map are related.

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[Ethanol-fueled]

I also found that chart hard to believe - For example, the highest risk for alcoholism was in Indonesia(a Muslim country) but NOT Mexico?!

Also, I rolled my eyes at "restless leg syndrome," aka "get-some-more-exercise-fatso" syndrome. Here are the biggest losers of the somewhat racist implications of the chart:

Prostate cancer - sub-Saharan Africa
Cirrhosis - China
Parkinson's - China, Indonesia
Asthma - Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa
Inflammatory bowel disease - Italy all the way, baby
Obesity - Northern Sou

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not due to lower environmental exposure, its genetic. The gene ALDH2 [wikipedia.org] is responsible for breaking down alcohol in the liver, and for 50% of Asians half the enzymes produced from this gene are ineffective in breaking down the alcohol. On the other hand, this makes them less susceptible to alcoholism, perhaps only due to the fact that they avoid drinking too much because of the effect it has on them.

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[WillKemp]

It's not due to lower environmental exposure, its genetic.

And how do those genes become predominant in a population? Because lower environmental exposure means people with that gene have a better chance of living long enough to reproduce.

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[MaskedSlacker]

No. Founder's effect is a FAR more likely explanation, and is going going to be responsible for most of these variations.

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As best I was able to tell, the chart was looking at specifically genetic(SNPs), rather than lifestyle, risk factors across various historical migration paths.

If they are looking at genetic risk factors, rather than lifestyle risks or overall incidence, it seems more plausible that higher risks would show up in odd places: genetic risks only get selected against in environments where they cause problems. If alcohol or cheap calories aren't available, the genes impose no penalty and spread more readily.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Internetuser1248]

As it is a early human migration map, the dot in the US refers to native Amercans, who as far as I know are not known for there obesity. The modern obese US is mostly of European descent. Further study is of course warranted into modern migration patterns but these are not shown on the map here.

Google's flu trends

[aa_trna_syn]

Google also has a flu trends mapping: http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/ [google.org]

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[antdude]

Here is what confuses me. Both http://www.weather.com/outlook/health/coldandflu/nationalreports/ [weather.com] and http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/#10139621013962 [google.org] seem to show different results. What's up with that? Which one is accurate?

Flu Trends on Twitter Not Reliable

[mentil]

Many diseases have flu-like symptoms, and most uneducated people who have any of those diseases would tweet that "they have the flu" without being tested or consulting a doctor, and those false positives would be picked up by the software.

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[Belial6]

Around here, we have the opposite. No matter what is wrong with you, if the doctor cannot easily tell you what it is, the standard answer is "You have the flew". Unless you meant that the doctors were the uneducated people.

Re:Flu Trends on Twitter Not Reliable

[stonedcat]

If my doctor ever tells me that I have "the flew", I'm getting a new doctor.

Re:

[roman_mir]

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

Re:

[tbird81]

It's actually most likely that you did have the flu.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Except their methodology doesn't say, "Oh, there were two million Tweets of the word 'flu' so there must have been two million cases of influenza." Sure, many, even possibly most, people Tweeting or searching for "flu" aren't actually going to have the flu, but you're still going to be able to see a relative increase in that sort of activity during a genuine outbreak, and you can use that correlation to show some sort of relative outbreak intensity, even if just from that data you couldn't actually translat

Old world migration to the Americas?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American, it's interesting that when this site talks of "migration" it pretty much means the older migrations to what is now Latin America via the land bridge. I know I've heard stories of certain European or African populations having genetic disease, and that being carried over into the US. Judging from the maps I'd guess this study takes a wider view, rather than express the realities of more recent migrations. (I'm no biologist, but this has to be interesting. The amount at which people travel

Nerds might find this interesting

[tbird81]

Well, nerds of European descent...

The genetic risk of alcoholism and extroversion from 23andMe [23andme.com]:
http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/10/21/genes-and-geography/ [23andme.com]

And more along the lines of the original story:
Parkinson's and BCC [23andme.com]

duh

[Ofloo]

This to be expected, .. the higher the live expectancy, the worse the gene pool becomes, .. in 3rd world countries people with bad genes are probably not surviving, .. due to missing medical treatment, .. so countries where live expectancy are higher, people do tend to get kids at an older age, and a lot of people with bad genes survive and are allowed to reproduce, .. I'm not saying there should be bans I'm just suggesting this is obvious, .. and everyone can come to this conclusion. And this got nothing

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[dredwerker]

This to be expected, .. the higher the live expectancy, the worse the gene pool becomes, .. in 3rd world countries people with bad genes are probably not surviving, .. due to missing medical treatment, .. so countries where live expectancy are higher, people do tend to get kids at an older age, and a lot of people with bad genes survive and are allowed to reproduce, .. I'm not saying there should be bans I'm just suggesting this is obvious, .. and everyone can come to this conclusion. And this got nothing to do with bad habits. like alcohol, smoking, or whatever.

High life expectancy is not not in itself bad genetically though is it. It just gets normally screened out before you get to reproduce.

Australia?

[tick-tock-atona]

Where's the data? Has no-one migrated past Indonesia?