The Microbiome, Intestinal Function, and Arginine Metabolism of Healthy Indian Women Are Different from Those of American and Jamaican Women

Indian Women of Childbearing Age Do Not Metabolically Conserve Arginine as Do American and Jamaican Women ,

We have reported that Indian women do not have increased Arg production during pregnancy like their American or Jamaican counterparts. There has not been a direct comparison of Arg flux, catabolism, and availability for NO synthesis in non‐pregnant American, Indian, and Jamaican women. The objective of this study was to determine whether Indian women are producing less Arg and/or catabolizing more Arg to Orn and therefore have less Arg available for anabolic pathways than their Jamaican and American counterparts. Ten healthy women of childbearing age from each country were given 6h primed, constant intravenous infusions of 15N2‐Arg, 2H2‐Cit, 15N2‐Orn, and 2H5‐Phe in both the fasted and fed states to measure Arg flux, hydrolysis, bioavailability, NO synthesis and Phe flux, an index of protein breakdown. USA India Jamaica P Value μmol/kg FFM/h μmol/kg FFM/h μmol/kg FFM/h Fasted Arg flux 56.1 ± 2.1a 54.2 ± 3.1a 66.1 ± 3.1 b 0.01 Arg hydrolysis 17.6 ± 1.5 a 23.7 ± 1.5 b 23.4 ± 1.6 b 0.01 Arg bioavailability 49.9 ± 1.3 ab 42.0 ± 2.6 a 55.5 ± 3.5 b 0.004 NO Synthesis 0.18 ± 0.01a 0.15 ± 0.01 b 0.21 ± 0.02 a 0.002 Phe flux 39.7 ± 0.9 39.0 ± 2.2 43.8 ± 2.3 0.17 Fed Arg flux 79.1 ± 3.3 a 80.3 ± 4.9 a 95.9 ± 2.9 b 0.008 Arg hydrolysis 27.3 ± 2.5 a 39.6 ± 3.7 b 37.2 ± 2.0 b 0.01 Arg bioavailability 51.8 ± 1.2 a 40.7 ± 3.5 b 57.5 ± 3.2 a <0.001 NO Synthesis 0.20 ± 0.01a 0.21 ± 0.03a 0.34 ± 0.04 b < 0.0001 Phe flux 58.8 ± 1.6 59.4 ± 3.0 63.3 ± 2.7 0.39 Means with different superscript letters are significantly different, P < 0.05 (post‐hoc Tukey's multiple comparison test).In conclusion, Indian women had increased Arg hydrolysis without a compensatory increase in Arg flux resulting in decreased bioavailability of Arg for the synthesis of proteins and other Arg‐derived biomolecules, including NO synthesis. Though American women also had slower Arg flux compared to Jamaican women, they were able to conserve Arg bioavailability because of decreased Arg hydrolysis. The results suggest that Indian women may need a higher dietary Arg intake.Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Arginine (arg) supply is critical for a successful pregnancy because of its roles in protein, nitric oxide (NO) and creatine syntheses and in cell growth and differentiation. NO is especially important for vascular expansion in pregnancy and a deficiency of arg supply could underlie the high prevalence of low birth weight (LBW) neonates in Indian women and in adolescent girls. Stable isotope tracers were used to measure arg flux and NO synthesis in pregnant American, Indian and Jamaican women and teenagers. Gestation Jamaica India United States Weeks Adult N=8 Teen N=8 Norm. BMI N=10 Low BMI N=10 Adult N=6 Arg Flux (μmol/kg/h) 13 108±6 107±6 50±2 63±3 20 108±5 28 114±12 82±7 45±2 50±2 36–39 82±3 Post‐partum 73±6 Values are Mean±SEM; versus postpartum value, P<0.01 lower than Jamaican and American values, P<0.01 Except for normal BMI Indian women, NO synthesis was not different among groups at trimesters 1 and 3. Pregnant Indian women produced arg at a slower rate compared to all others. This slower arg flux was associated with slower NO synthesis in normal BMI, but not in low BMI Indian women. There were significant correlations between birth weight and arg flux at trimester 1 (r=0.54, P<0.01) and trimester 3 (r= 0.53, P<0.01), indicating a strong association between decreased arg flux and LBW. Not surprisingly, the Indian women delivered 45% LBW babies compared to 19% for Jamaicans. Grant Funding Source : USDA/ARS

Beauty and the Limits of National Belonging in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine Vanita Reddy (bio) Does beauty come under the jurisdiction of the nation-state? Wai Chee Dimock, Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time Halfway through Jasmine (1989), Bharati Mukherjee's seminal immigrant novel about becoming American, the eponymous, illegal immigrant heroine stumbles upon an underground transnational beauty economy—the importing and sorting of rural Indian village women's hair. Jasmine watches as her guardian, Professorji, measures and sorts the switches of hair in a restaurant basement in a South Asian immigrant ghetto in Flushing, New York: The hair came in great bundles from the middlemen in villages as small as Hasnapur [Jasmine's home village] all over India. . . . Every weekday Professorji sat from eight o'clock till six on a kitchen ladder-stool in a room he rented in the basement of the Khyber Bar BQ measuring and labeling the length and thickness of each separate hair. Junk hair he sold to wigmakers. Fine hair to instrument makers. Eventually, scientific instruments and the U.S. Defense Department. It was no exaggeration to say that the security of the free world, in some small way, depended on the hair of Indian village women. (151-52) [End Page 337] Indian women's hair is exportable as an ingredient for either feminine beauty products (wigs) or the technologies of U.S. national security. Synecdoches of Indian village women's bodies, the bundles of hair figure as racialized and gendered fetishes in the transnational trafficking of bodies and goods between India and the U.S. The hair circulates between a dominant U.S. economy and an Indian economy about to enter into market neoliberalism during the final years of the cold war.1 Professorji observes that this transnational economy vitally depends upon Indian village women's allegedly more naturally beautiful hair. He tells Jasmine that Indian women's hair—free of "shampoos, gels, dyes, and permanents" (153)—contains a "virginity and innocence" (153) that American women's hair lacks.2 Professorji then invites Jasmine, once an Indian village woman, to sell her hair to him. Doing so would allow Jasmine to purchase a forged green card so that she could seek employment and "feel safe" in the highly policed immigrant space of Flushing (148). The promise of feeling safe, however, contains an ironic twist. On the one hand, the prospect of selling her beautiful hair offers Jasmine a way of securing economic and legal (resident alien) status within the U.S. during the anti-immigrant fervor of the 1980s.3 On the other hand, Jasmine's observations about the Defense department point to her recognition that the beautiful hair of Indian women also helps to secure U.S. national borders against the illegal immigrants whose labor, body, and body parts are required for such fortification. Thus while Jasmine's beautiful hair might afford her a provisional feeling of freedom and mobility within the nation, it might also serve, quite literally, as the raw material for the imperial nation-state's biopolitical surveillance. [End Page 338] The valorization of Indian female beauty in this scene constellates a set of tensions around migration, mobility, citizenship, and belonging for Jasmine. These tensions and contradictions exceed the critical framework of liberal multicultural inclusion within which Jasmine, as a representative text of late-twentieth-century South Asian immigrant experience, is often positioned.4 This essay argues that Jasmine repeatedly encounters the material limits of Indian and U.S. national belonging through a set of encounters with her beauty. Even in the absence of a narrative explicitness around her beauty, Jasmine's national status depends upon her gendering, racialization, and sexualization such that these categorizing processes cannot be disaggregated from her categorization as beautiful. Through various attachments to forms of national inclusion and exclusion, racialized beauty in Jasmine complicates a dominant post-Enlightenment view of beauty. In this view, beauty is regarded solely as a redemptive force which, for those deemed lucky enough to possess it, facilitates social advancement through its alignment with liberal democratic ideals such as empowerment and freedom. Such liberal ideals traffic in a fetishistic logic of beauty, since the conferral or possession of...

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with several subtypes presenting various morphological and molecular features, and response to therapy. While targeted therapies are available for estrogen receptor positive and HER2-positive breast tumors, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) which are negative for ER, progesterone receptor PR and HER2 receptors lack suitable targeted therapies. TNBC is one of the most aggressive breast cancer subtypes and poses a clinical challenge as they lack suitable targeted therapies. While a majority of breast cancer patients in the US are postmenopausal, more than 80% of Indian patients are younger than 60 years of age, with median age being 40-55, presenting with larger tumor size, poor tumor grade, and low rates of hormone-receptor positive status. Literature review suggests that none of the standard risk factors for breast cancer had any significant associations for the early onset breast cancers among Indian women. Recent studies on breast cancer subtypes across culture and geographical regions in India have indicated that incidence of early onset breast cancer, TNBC in particular is rising at alarming rates among Indian women. The interaction of race and ethnicity with age, molecular profiles and lifestyles has contributed significantly to the heterogeneity of TNBC breast cancer. The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review to identify factors that may increase risk for breast cancer among young Indian women. Methods: All the major databases including Web of Science and PubMed were used to search the literature for early onset breast cancer among Indian women. In a study that analyzed molecular subtypes in early onset breast cancer among various races that included Indian, Chinese, non-Hispanic White (NHW), African American (AA), and Hispanic women, incidence of TNBC was significantly higher (p = 0.0369) with early onset (40 years and younger) in Indian women. Incidence of HER2 over-expression subtype was also highest among Indian women. Conclusion: Early onset breast cancer is increasing rapidly among Indian women, along with obesity and diabetes. It is suggested that epigenetic factors that include sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise, fatty diets and increasing obesity with underlying molecular mechanisms may contribute to early onset breast cancer among Indian women. Future studies that focus on racial and ethnic differences in genetic, reproductive, lifestyle and environmental exposures of TNBC pathways will offer unique biomarkers, targeted therapies and clinical trial design leading to personalized medicine. Citation Format: Padma P. Tadi Uppala, Maheswari Senthil, Utkarsh P. Patel, Sharon Lum, Carlos Garberoglio, Larry Beeson, John Morgan. Heterogeneity of triple negative breast cancer across race and ethnicities: Indian women at higher risk for early onset breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1783.

Associations between self-reported sleep duration and cardiometabolic risk factors in young African-origin adults from the five-country modeling the epidemiologic transition study (METS)

INTRODUCTION Soon after Native American Diane Millich and her non-Indian husband got married, they moved into her home, located on the Southern Ute Indian reservation where she grew up. Millich s husband began routinely abusing her, and within a year she suffered more than 100 incidents of being slapped, kicked, punched and living in terror[.] (1) Millich made numerous attempts to call her local tribal and county police for help during these episodes of violence. In fact after one instance of beating his wife, Millich s husband himself called the sheriff to report what he had done. Because he knew that there was nothing the sheriff could do. That no help would come. That he would never be prosecuted for what he did. Why? Because Millich was a Native American, Millich s husband was not, and he was abusing her on tribal land. And because of these circumstances, as Millich later observed, law couldn't touch him, (2) Unfortunately Millich s circumstance is not an isolated oversight of the law. Many Indian women have not been able to seek help or justice because they happened to be trapped in this scenario: an Indian victim of a non-Indian abuser on tribal land. A recent amendment to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), however, was passed to change all this. A historic piece of legislation has recently been enacted which gives Native American victims of domestic abuse a new hope in being able to bring their abusers to justice. Before the passage of this act, a jurisdictional gap existed which permitted non-Indian perpetrators of domestic and sexual abuse to escape prosecution. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, however, seeks to close this gap by granting tribes criminal over domestic abuse crimes in Indian country. The legality of the unprecedented will undoubtedly be challenged soon after its implementation, and the Supreme Court may have to determine the constitutionality of the Act. Part I of this Note describes the exigent situation of sexual violence in Indian country against Native Americans (especially by non-Indians) by presenting statistics on the issue. Part II examines how, despite these high rates of domestic violence, the interaction of federal cases, congressional acts, and tribal sovereignty had prevented federal, state, and tribal governments from having the jurisdictional authority and effective means to prosecute non-Indian abusers in Indian country. Part III explores how the latest amendment to the Violence Against Women Act offers a solution to this injustice. Specifically, Title IX of the Act closes the jurisdictional gap by granting tribes special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians in Indian country. (3) Finally, Part IV presents the likely claims that will be raised in federal court against the VAWA Amendment. These include challenging Congress's authority to enact the criminal jurisdiction, and questioning whether fundamental constitutional rights can be upheld in tribal courts under the Act. I. Domestic Violence Issues in Indian Country The need for greater protection of Indian (4) women against crimes of domestic and sexual violence is dire, as evidenced by numerous studies. According to the Department of Justice, from 1992 to 2001 the average violent crime rate among Indians was approximately two and one half times the national rate, and Native Americans were twice as likely to experience rape or sexual assault compared to all other races. (5) Another study found 31.4% of Native American and Alaska Native women (that is, every 1 out of 3) are likely to be raped in their lifetimes. Compare this to the 17.7% of White women and 18.8% of African-American women likely to be raped, and the results are staggering. (6) Unfortunately, Indian women mainly experience sexual and domestic violence at the hands of non-Indians. One compilation of the National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) from 1992 to 2005 shows that American Indian and Alaska Native women are almost three times as likely to experience rape or sexual assault as compared to White, African American, or Asian American women. …

Acne vulgaris is a common skin disease with a large quality of life impact, characterized by comedones, inflammatory lesions, secondary dyspigmentation and scarring. There are few large objective studies comparing acne epidemiology between racial and ethnic groups. This study aimed to define the prevalence and subtypes of acne in women of different racial groups from four ethnicities. The sample consisted of 2895 (384 African American, 520 Asian, 1295 Caucasian, 258 Hispanic and 438 Continental Indian) women ranging in age from 10 to 70 years. Photographs of subjects were graded for acne lesions, scars, dyspigmentation, and measurements taken of sebum excretion and pore size. Clinical acne was more prevalent in African American and Hispanic women (37%, 32% respectively) than in Continental Indian, Caucasian and Asian (23%, 24%, 30% respectively) women. All racial groups displayed equal prevalence of both subtypes of acne with the exception of Asians, for whom inflammatory acne was more prevalent than comedonal (20% vs. 10%) acne, and in Caucasians, for whom comedonal acne was more prevalent than inflammatory (14% vs. 10%) acne. Hyperpigmentation was more prevalent in African American and Hispanic (65%, 48% respectively) than in Asian, Continental Indian and Caucasian (18%, 10%, 25% respectively) women. Dyspigmentation and atrophic scarring were more common in African American and Hispanic women than in all other ethnicities. There was a negative correlation between pore size and skin lightness for all ethnicities. Sebum production was positively correlated with acne severity in African American, Asian and Hispanic women, and pore size was positively correlated with acne in African American, Asian and Continental Indian women, (for all above results, P<0.05). Only female participants were recruited. Data collection was restricted to four cities, with some ethnicities from single cities. Acne was evaluated only on the left side of the face and the two-dimensional nature of photography may not capture all skin surface changes. Acne prevalence and sequelae were more common in those with darker skin types, suggesting that acne is a more heterogeneous condition than previously described and highlight the importance of skin-colour tailored treatment.

I n the late 1960s and through the 1970s, reports of coercive, involuntary, and otherwise nonconsenting sterilizations of American Indian, African American, Mexican, and Puerto Rican origin women began surfacing in the United States.1 These revelations came at a time of intense civil rights activity and political consciousness among non-white2 groups in the United States. American Indian and African American women and girls were especially impacted by sterilization abuse. In a well-known case, recounted by Jane Lawrence, Dr. Connie PinkertonUri saw a twenty-six-year-old patient in early November 1972 who visited her clinic and requested a womb transplant.3 It turned out that the woman was given a full hysterectomy (for alcohol* ism) at age twenty after being told by an Indian Health Services (IHS) > doctor that the procedure was reversible. Other scholars have noted cases of American Indian women receiving hysterectomies as young « as age eleven.4 These cases are similar to the experiences of African 2 American women and girls, such as the Reif sisters, ages twelve and i fourteen, who were the unwilling and unknowing recipients of tubai 5 17 sterilization as well as guinea pigs for intrauterine devices and what o were then experimental DepoProvera shots (along with their older ° sister, Katie) in the early 1970s.5 African American civil rights leader £ Fannie Lou Hamer was compelled to get involved in the modern civil « rights movement, in part, after receiving a Mississippi Appendectomy

Urbanicity, Income, and Mammography-Use Disparities Among American Indian Women

Gender inequality and violence of indigenous women began during the high level of European colonial penetration. This process was continued and maintained by the creation of federal Indian legislation. In order for this process to take hold, indigenous men were forced to perpetuate the same type of gender inequality that was practiced by the new Americans. Consequently, indigenous women were displaced from their indigenous purpose and relegated to an unfamiliar, inferior and often subjugated position to Indian men and to whites. As a result of this treatment, the relationship between American Indian men and women changed dramatically, contributing to a higher level of conflict and gender inequality within and outside of tribal governments. This article examines factors that gave rise to the inequality of Indian women and offers suggestions on how American Indian women can achieve a level of equality and still not sidestep the larger issue of tribal sovereignty.

Asian Indians have approximately 3 times the rate of coronary artery disease as do age-matched European Americans, but the increased risk cannot be explained by the presence of known physiological and behavioral risk factors. One previous study suggested that Asian Indians have diminished vasoactive responses to isoproterenol, but no published study has examined responses to psychological stressors. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the vasomotor response to stress, as indexed by hemodynamic measures, would be exaggerated in Asian Indian men and women, relative to European American individuals. Thirty-seven Asian Indian and 43 European American men and women were tested in a standard reactivity protocol, whereas heart rate, blood pressure, and cardiac impedance measures were assessed. Asian Indian men and women had significantly smaller changes in systolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure during the stressors, relative to European American men and women. Asian Indian women, but not men, had significantly smaller diastolic blood pressure and total peripheral-resistance index changes to the stressors, relative to the other 3 groups. These data are in contrast to our expectation of decreased tendency of Asian Indians to vasodilate during psychological stress but do suggest that sex and Asian Indian ethnicity interact to influence vascular reactivity to stressors.

This brief report used the mortality data to separately examine suicide rates of the six largest Asian American groups: Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. In 2000, Japanese American men (13.8 per 100,000) showed significantly higher suicide rate than Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese American men (7.3, 4.0, and 6.1 per 100,000), whereas Chinese, Korean, and Japanese women (3.7, 3.9, and 4.3 per 100,000) showed higher suicide rates than Indian women (1.2 per 100,000). In 2010, Korean and Japanese American men (19.9 and 15.7 per 100,000) showed higher suicide rates than men of other Asian groups. Korean and Japanese American women (8.1 and 5.0 per 100,000) showed higher suicide rates than Indian and Filipino American women (1.5 and 1.8 per 100,000). The findings challenge the notion that Asian Americans are at low risk for suicide and underscore the importance of examining ethnic variation in suicide behaviors among Asian Americans.

Although studies suggest that anti-fat attitudes and fear of fatness exist among Indian women, few researchers have examined the cross-cultural applicability of their measures prior to assessing Indian samples. In the present study, we evaluated the measurement equivalence of two related measures, the Anti-Fat Attitudes Questionnaire (AFA) and the Goldfarb Fear of Fat Scale (GFFS), and tested for differences in means among college women in India (n = 226) and European American college women in the USA (n = 211). For both measures, there was good evidence for measurement equivalence across samples. Mean comparisons suggested that the Indian and European American participants differed significantly in some but not other dimensions of attitudes toward fatness. Whereas Indian women reported greater dislike of overweight others, European American women reported greater fear of gaining weight and beliefs that they may gain weight. However, overall differences in GFFS fear of fatness were not statistically significant. Although these results are interpreted cautiously, they offer preliminary evidence regarding the attitudes toward fatness among Indian and European American college women. Further examination of these constructs would serve to facilitate a better understanding of the potential mechanisms underlying body image concerns and eating psychopathology across diverse cultural groups.

Hepatic secretions of biliary lipids were estimated in 43 patients with and without cholesterol gallstones. Studies were carried out by a marker dilution technique employing duodenal intubation with a three-lumen tube. Hourly secretion rates of cholesterol, bile acids, and phospholipids were determined during constant infusion with liquid formula. In 17 American Indian women with gallstones, hourly outputs of biliary bile acids were significantly less than those in 7 Indian men and 12 Caucasian women without gallstones. These findings suggest that a decreased hepatic secretion of bile acids contributes significantly to the production of a lithogenic bile in Indian women. However, in Indian women with gallstones, secretion of biliary cholesterol was also significantly increased, as compared with Caucasian women without stones. Therefore, lithogenic bile in Indian women was, in most cases, due to a combined decrease in bile acid output and increase in cholesterol secretion. In an attempt to determine the mechanisms for these abnormalities, cholesterol balance studies were done in Indian women with gallstones and normal Indian men. Balance data were compared with results reported previously in non-Indian patients studied by the same techniques, and in general, Indian women showed a slight increase in fecal excretion of bile acids. Since bile acids in the enterohepatic circulation were relatively depleted in Indian women, these patients had a reduced fractional reabsorption. However, previous studies have shown that Caucasians can rapidly replenish bile acid pools in the presence of much greater intestinal losses, and it is suggested that among Indian women with gallstones, reduced secretion rates of bile acids are primarily the result of defective homeostatic regulation of bile acid synthesis. In Indian women with gallstones, at least two factors may have contributed to an increased availability of cholesterol in the liver for secretion into bile. First, cholesterol was inadequately converted into bile acids, and secondly, an increased amount of cholesterol was synthesized, as shown by the balance technique. This enhanced production of cholesterol can partially be explained by obesity, but other factors may also play a role.