Impact of Pasifika ancestry on health explained
Dr Dianne Sika-Paotonu, who presented at the 'Translating Research into Action' workshop at Victoria, Friday 4 September, 2015.
New findings about the special characteristics of the immune systems of Pasifika people were presented at a workshop at Victoria last week.
Molecular geneticist Dr Geoff Chambers, who is a researcher at Victoria’s School of Biological Sciences, has spent the last 25 years researching the impact of peoples’ ancestry on their health.
The most recent data to emerge from his ongoing research shows that Māori and Pasifika people are genetically distinct from Europeans. “It goes some way to explaining why some autoimmune diseases that are relatively common in people of European descent—such as multiple sclerosis—are virtually unheard of among Māori and Pasifika,” says Dr Chambers. “It also partly explains why diseases such as type-2 diabetes are more common in Māori or Pasifika people.”
Dr Chambers says the findings highlight an existing inequity in medical treatment. “Medicine today is an increasingly genetic field of knowledge,” he says. “Many new drugs have been developed by Europeans for Europeans, but if we are to deliver these advances effectively to Māori and Pasifika people then we need new information, which we must uncover ourselves. This requires knowing something about their genetic make-up.”
Dr Chambers says the idea behind the workshop, which hosted about 40 attendees, was to share his findings with interested parties including health workers, and people who contributed samples used in his study. “These people gave up their time to help me with the research in the first instance by providing clinical samples—this was a fantastic opportunity to be able to give something back in the form of new information.”
Also presenting at the workshop was Dr Dianne Sika-Paotonu, a lecturer at Victoria’s Graduate School of Nursing Midwifery and Health. Dr Sika-Paotonu completed her PhD in Biomedical Science while at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, which is based at Victoria University, specialising in immunology. She presented her doctoral research on how the immune system can be trained to recognise illness, and the potential for a cancer vaccine.
“It was a wonderful opportunity to strengthen the connection between Victoria University and the Pasifika community,” says Dr Sika-Paotonu. “It was also a great way to share important findings around Pasifika health research and keep Pasifika researchers connected with the community.”