Race, Ethnicity and Ancestry in Unrelated Transplant Matching for the National Marrow Donor Program: A Comparison of Multiple Forms of Self-Identification with Genetics.

ABSTRACT: We conducted a nationwide study comparing self-identification to genetic ancestry classifications in a large cohort (n = 1752) from the National Marrow Donor Program. We sought to determine how various measures of self-identification intersect with genetic ancestry, with the aim of improving matching algorithms for unrelated bone marrow transplant. Multiple dimensions of self-identification, including race/ethnicity and geographic ancestry were compared to classifications based on ancestry informative markers (AIMs), and the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, which are required for transplant matching. Nearly 20% of responses were inconsistent between reporting race/ethnicity versus geographic ancestry. Despite strong concordance between AIMs and HLA, no measure of self-identification sh

SUBMITTER: Hollenbach JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4545604 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature