New admixture study finds more East Asian ancestry associated with low risk of diabetes among Pacific Islanders

This new study is based on a sample of people (n = 1,853) from Guam and Saipan.  Using ~49k SNPs the authors found genetic ancestry derived from 5 populations: Marianas Islanders, East Asians, Micronesians, Europeans, and Melanesians.

They tested the association of ancestry estimates with diabetes, fasting glucose and fasting insulin levels in study participants (n=1,853). They controlled for age, sex and end-stage kidney disease. 

All 3 traits were associated with genetic ancestry. East Asian ancestry was associated with the lowest diabetes risk and lowest mean levels of glucose and insulin, while diabetes risk and fasting glucose were highest in Marianas Islanders. The diabetes risk was 6.9 times higher for Marianas Islanders compared to East Asians. The mean differences in fasting glucose and insulin for the two groups were large. 

More on trust: As a follow-up to the last post, I wondered about the level of trust in Asian and Muslim countries. Based on World Values Survey data, here are the percent who say that people can generally be trusted:


Percent who say you can trust people

World 29.6

Iran 65.3
Saudi Arabia 53.0
Indonesia 51.6
Iraq 47.6
Egypt 37.9
Pakistan 27.9
Morocco 23.5
Bangladesh 22.2
Azerbaijan 20.5
Turkey 12.6
Algeria 11.2

China 55.2
Japan 42.9
Taiwan 38.2
Vietnam 41.1
India 37.9
South Korea 32.1
Philippines 7.0

Muslim countries are all over the place--they are about as diverse as the whole sample of countries. Numbers like that in Iraq surprise me, given what Steve Sailer has written about how consanguinity in Muslim countries undermines trust beyond the family.

India is the trusting one among South Asian countries. The Phillipines is the exception in Southeast Asia, and East Asia is trusting.

East Asian IQ variation: Over at iSteve, there is a discussion about why cultures stagnate, with quite a bit of attention devoted to Chinese stasis at the time when Europe was flowering.

One standard HBD explanation for higher Chinese IQ combined with lower cultural accomplishment is less IQ diversity. I haven't made a systematic study of it, but the IQ studies I have read do not indicate a smaller East Asian standard deviation.

Using GSS data, I combined Chinese and Japanese Americans (only those born in this country) and got a standard deviation (SD) of 2.04 across 50 respondents. For whites born in the country, the SD is 2.08--not different, basically. SD tends to increase along with higher means, so if we take that into account by using the coefficient of variation (CV), we get .30 for Asians and .33 for whites. No difference, or a trivial difference at best.

It would be better to have a sample from China, and even better to have samples from the period when Europe was surging ahead, but I take the GSS data as evidence that other kinds of theories are necessary to explain why China has not been on top. IQ, as important as it is, is far from everything.