Here’s a newsflash for absolutely no one, we’re all practising healthcare in racially diverse communities, right? Take Australia for example. At last count, at least 1 in 4 were not born here and of those who were, 3% are indigenous and many many more come from migrant families. This spells DiVeRSIty. Yet our pathology reference intervals are a whitewash, frequently derived from in-house samples that stratify by gender and age but not race, or adopted external data from predominantly Caucasian countries. Think it doesn’t matter? It does. I learnt this as (almost) always…on the ground.
I have had the privilege of mentoring health professionals in South East Asia for several years but in hindsight, I can see I was under-cooked for the role: Almost every patient these professionals discussed with me, had a vitamin D result that made me feel faint at their ‘rickets-like readings’.
“But all our patients have blood levels like this, that’s normal here”, they reassured me.
And of course, they were right.
I hit the books science databases to find out more and sure enough, new evidence has emerged of racial differences in relation to vitamin D binding and therefore definitions of ‘adequacy’ in terms of blood levels of 25(OH)D, and this has been particularly well documented amongst SE Asians Gopal-Kothandapani et al., 2019 But who of us knows this outside of that region? When we see patients of this background, are we alert to the strong genetic differences that drive different Vitamin D metabolism and therefore redefine healthy, or are we incorrectly comparing them to Caucasian Cohorts?! I have to confess in the past I’ve done the latter 🤦♀️ So what else are we over or under-diagnosing or just plain misunderstanding, in our patients who are not Caucasian? Chances are quite a lot. But the more I’ve dug into the topic, looking at racial differences in pathology markers, the more complex it gets, with plenty of conflation for example with increased rates of certain diseases. So it’s not an easy answer, granted, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to achieve better clarity, for us and our patients.
We all pat ourselves on the back because we’re across the understanding that a healthy weight is defined differently depending on your racial background, we’ve nailed (hopefully!) the whole ‘healthy BMI < 23 in Asian populations and the smaller WC cutoffs’…but really…there’s so much more that needs to be done.
Want to be on the front foot with critical pathology interpretation? Join the club!
There is such a groundswell of naturopaths, nutritionists, physical therapists etc working in integrative health that are ‘lab literate’. It appears to be a combination of both a choice and consumer expectation. With patients thinking, surely, we can make sense of those numbers on the page that remain a mystery to the patient…and tbh to some doctors!? We should. We’re currently halfway through our 6 month long MasterCourse in Comprehensive Diagnostics which is custom-built for this context. It has been incredibly well attended and well-received to date and we’re excited about the amazing content that Rachel has had to redevelop along the way. If you missed out on the actual live classroom experience…your chance is coming soon. Promise. Your DIY Diagnostics version will be released at the end of this year.
Let us know if you’re keen by sending an email to [email protected], and we’ll put you on the ‘first to know’ list.