Does the human microbiome tell us something about race?

Delgado, Abigail Nieves; Baedke, Jan

doi:10.1057/s41599-021-00772-3

Cited by 18 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…NICUs, then, deserve more attention as a site of embodiment, both biological (via acquisition of NICU microbiomes) and social (via trauma, unequal care, and structural inequalities). It is important to note that some microbiome studies that examine racial, ethnic, and population differences verge on the edge of race science due to poor understanding of racialization and racial categories (Benezra, 2020; Nieves Delgado & Baedke, 2021). Thus, a socially informed microbiome science is critical for understanding this pathway.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical biocultural approach to early growth in the United States

Miller

2022

American J Hum Biol

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Objectives A critical biocultural anthropology seeks to link perspectives from social theory and ethnography to human biology. In the United States (U.S.), multiple forms of structural inequalities affect early growth, including racism and poverty. The goal of this paper is to test the effects of social inequalities on birth weight and later height in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES), and to contextualize potential pathways of embodiment that link social structure and biology. Methods This study used data from 8392 children ages 0–5 years from the 2005 to 2016 NHANES. Reported birth weight and measured length/height (converted to height‐for‐age z‐scores) were used as outcome variables, while various measures of socioeconomic status and the NHANES‐defined race and ethnicity categories were operationalized as social variables. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was chosen to represent the data. Results The final model represented an excellent fit to the data. Higher birth weights were associated with higher height‐for‐age z‐scores. The Black racial category was associated with lower birth weight and higher height‐for‐age z‐score, while the “Other” racial category was also associated with lower birth weight. The socioeconomic status factor variable was significantly associated with birth weight and height‐for‐age z‐scores. There were also multiple indirect effects of social variables on height‐for‐age z‐scores mediated via their effects on birth weight. Conclusions Inequalities in race and socioeconomic status persist in birth weight and early childhood stature in the U.S. These findings can be contextualized by a critical biocultural anthropology that integrates lived experiences and pathways of embodiment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical biocultural approach to early growth in the United States

Miller

2022

American J Hum Biol

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“…To ensure greater global equity in the benefits of microbiome research, the field should prioritize and incentivize improved global representation of microbiome samples. Importantly, this approach should be grounded in benefitting the populations and communities sampled, rather than simply using these microbiomes as a tool to improve health in North American and European countries, as others have explained (Benezra 2020;Delgado and Baedke 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public human microbiome data dominated by highly developed countries

Abdill

Adamowicz

Blekhman

2021

Preprint

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The importance of sampling from globally representative populations has been well established in human genomics. In human microbiome research, however, we lack a full understanding of the global distribution of sampling in research studies. This information is crucial to better understand global patterns of microbiome-associated diseases and to extend the health benefits of this research to all populations. Here, we analyze the country of origin of all 444,829 human microbiome samples that have been collected to date and are available from the world's three largest genomic data repositories, including the Sequence Read Archive (SRA). We show that more than 71% of publicly available human microbiome samples with a known origin come from Europe, the United States, and Canada, including 46.8% from the United States alone, despite the country representing only 4.3% of the global population. We also find that central and southern Asia is the most underrepresented region: Countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh account for more than a quarter of the world population but make up only 1.8 percent of human microbiome samples. These results demonstrate a critical need to ensure more global representation of participants in microbiome studies.

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“…Nieves Delgado and Baedke (2021) provide some hints for further exploring the implications of biosocial microbial formations for reproducing whiteness-as interdependent with the racialization of non-Europeans rather than as an independent race-free universal. In explaining how settlers established notions of "lower and higher races" in terms of the fragility of "stereotypical body-environment balances," Nieves Delgado and Baedke (2021) note how these ideas of "health risks through distorted balances" also elicited "fears of degeneration among Spaniards living in the colonies" (p. 6 emphasis added).…”

Section: Conclusion: Still Missingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-racism, racism, and the microbiome: A review

Rawson

2024

Progress in Environmental Geography

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Debates about the relationship between racism, anti-racism, and the new life sciences calls for further inquiry into the growing popularity of microbiome science. Scientists define human microbiomes as unique communities of microorganisms that vary across body-sites, lifespan, location, and lifestyle. As new biomarkers for human diversity, scientists argue that microbiomes environmentally mediate development and health, which also reframes classical models of disease. In the small subset of literature that engages the stakes for race, the implications of human microbiome science are posed in terms of paradoxically reifying racism and empowering anti-racist science. To illustrate this duality, I first review the two most pervasive critiques of explicitly and implicitly reproducing racial categories in human microbiome science. Then, I show how some of the same critics embrace other versions of microbiome science as a tool to fight for environmental justice and de-essentialize race. However, in the next section, I challenge this distinction by arguing that even the most promising aspect of microbiome science as biosocial “becoming” can reproduce racial hierarchies too. In sketching limits in the current literature, I conclude by suggesting that critical engagements with biosocial formations of race need to further examine the relational formation of whiteness and that such inquiry requires elevating Black and Indigenous scholars.

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Does the human microbiome tell us something about race?

Cited by 18 publications

References 102 publications

A critical biocultural approach to early growth in the United States

A critical biocultural approach to early growth in the United States

Public human microbiome data dominated by highly developed countries

Anti-racism, racism, and the microbiome: A review

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