The traditional diet of the Inuit could be considered a good
model of a healthy diet for the rest of us if and only if the
Inuit do not have unique genetic adaptations to their
environment, including its dietary particulars.  If it can be
shown that they *do* have special genetic adaptations, then we
must be more circumspect in generalizing about human nutrition on
the basis of what works for the Inuit.  The following research
suggests that such special genetic adaptations do exist.

Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]

--------------------------------------------------
J Mol Med 1997 May;75(5):364-370

Are Canadian Inuit at increased genetic risk for coronary heart
disease?

Hegele RA, Young TK, Connelly PW

Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The Keewatin Inuit of the Northwest Territories of Canada have a
very low age-adjusted mortality rate from coronary heart disease.
We hypothesized that this apparent protection from disease has a
genetic basis. We determined the prevalence of the
disease-associated alleles of five candidate genes for
atherosclerosis-related phenotypes. Surprisingly, four of the
five alleles studied, namely AGT T235, FABP2 T54, PON R192 and
APOE E4, were significantly more frequent in a sample of 175
Keewatin Inuit than among a representative control sample of
whites living in the region. The high frequencies of these
disease-associated alleles suggests either that they have no
relationship with disease susceptibility in the Inuit, or that
some unmeasured genetic and/or environmental factors mitigate
disease susceptibility that is associated with these alleles.
This highlights the difficulty in extrapolating findings from one
population to another. Also, very modest genotype-phenotype
associations were observed between APOE genotype (P = 0.016) and
plasma low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration and
between FABP2 genotype and plasma 2-h postprandial, glucose
concentration (P = 0.048). The relationship between APOE alleles
and plasma low-density lipoprotein cholesterol was the same as
has been previously reported in many study samples. However, the
relationship between FABP2 alleles and plasma 2-h postprandial
glucose concentrations was the opposite to that reported in other
studies. This suggests that differences in environment, such as
the type of fatty acid consumed, interacts with functional
differences in gene products involved in candidate metabolic
pathways to produce phenotypic differences.

UI: 97325425