Esteban González Burchard ^1*, Luisa N. Borrell ², Shweta Choudhry ³, Mariam Naqvi ¹, Hui-ju Tsai ¹, Jose R. Rodriguez-Santana ⁴, Rocio Chapela ⁵, Scott D. Rogers ⁶, Rui Mei ⁷, William Rodriguez-Cintron ⁸, Jose F. Arena ⁶, Rick Kittles ⁹, Eliseo J. Perez-Stable ¹, Elad Ziv ¹, Neil Risch ¹

¹ University of California, San Francisco
² Columbia University
³ UCSF
⁴ Pediatric Pulmonary Program of San Juan, San Juan, PR
⁵ Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias (INER), Mexico City, MX
⁶ Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD
⁷ Affymetrix, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
⁸ San Juan VAMC, University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, San Juan, PR
⁹ Human Cancer Genetics, Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: eburch{at}itsa.ucsf.edu.

	Abstract

Latinos are the largest minority population in the United States. Although usually classified as a single ethnic group by researchers, Latinos are heterogeneous from cultural, socioeconomic, and genetic perspectives.

From a cultural and social perspective, Latinos represent a wide variety of national origins and ethnic and cultural groups, with a full spectrum of social class. From a genetic perspective, Latinos are descended from indigenous American, European, and African populations.

We review the historical events that led to the formation of contemporary Latino populations and use results from recent genetic and clinical studies to illustrate the unique opportunity Latino groups offer for studying the interaction between racial, genetic, and environmental contributions to disease occurrence and drug response.

Key Words: Environment, Epidemiology, Genetics, Hispanics/Latinos, Race/Ethnicity

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