Why Migration Is A Natural Health Experiment
The Morning Standard|October 20, 2021
Studies provide proof—across ethnicity, time and geography— that environmental factors greatly influence disease outcomes like hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease
Dr K Srinath Reddy
Why Migration Is A Natural Health Experiment

THE Nobel Prize for Economics in 2021 was awarded to three economists for their work on the lessons that natural experiments provide. These arise from comparisons between population groups that experience outcomes of real-life exposures that were not planned as an intervention trial. In health, migration of people produces a large natural experiment, which enables us to observe the effects of a changed living environment on their health. It creates an excellent platform to study gene-environment interactions.

In the 1980s, there was high global interest in the observation that the Japanese had a very low incidence of coronary heart disease in contrast to the very high rates in Europe and the US. So a study was conducted to see if persons of Japanese ethnicity would still retain low risk propensity if they migrated to regions with a higher risk of heart attacks. The Ni-Hon-San study compared Japanese living in Japan (Nippon) with those living in Honolulu (Hawaii) and San Francisco (California).

This story is from the October 20, 2021 edition of The Morning Standard.

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This story is from the October 20, 2021 edition of The Morning Standard.

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