A LACK of diversity in genetic studies could be limiting scientific advancement, according to a new study by Oxford University researchers.

They found that both those studying genetic discovery research and those people being studied, continue to be overwhelmingly of European descent. For the first time it has also been revealed that subjects are concentrated in a handful of countries – the UK, US and Iceland – and have specific demographic characteristics.

The authors caution that this lack of diversity has potentially huge implications for the understanding and applications of genetic discoveries.

Prof Melinda Mills, lead author and Nuffield Professor of Sociology at Oxford University, said: “Genetic discoveries offer exciting medical possibilities, but without increasing the diversity of people studied and environments they live in, the usage and returns of this research are limited.

“There is increasing recognition that our health outcomes are a complex interplay between genes and the environment – or in other words nature and nurture – yet most discoveries have been taken from populations that are very similar, with limited environmental variation.”

The work reviewed 4,000 scientific studies between 2005 and 2018. It also looked at who was being studied in terms of ancestral background, location and demographics, along with who was conducting the research, including the researchers themselves.