Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Dr Bishara | The Nigerian Paradox_ The Gene That Doesn't Harm

17 Sept 2024 · 0 min

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Aaron Hartman, MD (speaker) discusses the "Nigerian paradox": despite a high prevalence of the APOE4 gene—typically linked to increased risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's—Nigerian populations show no increased risk, prompting questions about environmental, lifestyle, or unknown protective factors that modify gene expression or disease manifestation.

Yeah, it's really interesting, the concept, what you mentioned about, like, sub Saharan Africa, if you're familiar with the Nigerian paradox, where it's a whole country that has tons of people with APOE 4, which is the gene associated with heart disease and dementia, and they have no increased risk in that whole population. It just makes you wonder, what are they doing there that's so radically different that literally the gene for Alzheimer's and inflammation is not expressed in that population?