Anthropological data to be used for personalised medicine

Anthropological data is being used to formulate personalised medicine based on DNA for treatment of complex diseases

Anthropological data is being used to formulate personalised medicine based on DNA technology for treatment of complex diseases and is expected to come into use in India in the next ten years.

Anthropological Society of India (ASI), as a partner of a consortium, has started gene mapping on 500 volunteers from certain areas of Andhra Pradesh, Mysore and Jodhpur in Rajasthan suffering from Type-2 diabetes with anthropological data, ASI director-in-charge V R Rao said.

Medical Colleges of these areas, where the disease was rampant, are the other partners of the two-year project, he said adding drug manufacturers are also likely to participate in the consortium.

Rao, who is to participate in the inauguration of an exhibition on human origin and genome, said anthropological data collected since 1946 have provided useful information as to why people of a particular area suffer from a particular disease and need special medication and line of treatment.

For instance anti-malarial drug used on patients of some North Eastern states cause fatal jaundice for the simple reason that they have ‘G6PD’ deficiency in their gene since their ancestors started agricultural practice 10,000 years ago by blocking off an area to collect water.

Rao said during a yearlong mass screening of 5000 children in Kolkata, ASI found that incidence of thalassemia there was as high as eight per cent as compared to national average of only two per cent. Similarly sickle cell anaemia was found rampant in Nagpur.

ASI has set up a laboratory in Shillong for mass screening of haemoglobin ‘E’ variant of thalassemia. Another laboratory could be set up by ASI if state governments extend cooperation to find out which particular disease is widespread in their respective population and its causes and try to formulate strategy to tackle the diseases accordingly.

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ASI is working on this line in Nagaland, he said.

Data was also collected by ASI on cultural tolerance among various tribes in the North East and time has come for their use in formulating policies for fostering amity among different sections of people not only in the region but also elsewhere in the country, he said.

Speaking of the major projects of the central organisation, he said under a national project on indigenous knowledge system ASI would engage in the 11th plan period one trained anthropologist in each of the 91 cultural zones of the country for documentation and digitisation of traditional knowledge.

The areas to be covered would include medicinal plants and the data would also be used to thwart moves to patent the knowledge by foreigners as was done in the case of patenting of basmati rice and turmeric.