UT-Houston Research Continues in Starr County

Twenty years ago, officials and physicians in Starr County, Texas, urged scientists at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston to study the devastating impact of type 2 diabetes on the county's residents.

The resulting research that screened thousands of area residents for diabetes, and pointed the way to the discovery of a susceptibility gene for the disease, continues today in a variety of forms.

Dr. Craig Hanis of the UT-Houston School of Public Health Human Genetics Center, leads two National Institutes of Health research projects, and participates in a third study to help residents ward off the disease with exercise and modified diets.

Dr. Hanis, working with UT-Houston's Starr County Health Studies Field Office, which he and colleagues established in 1981, continues his type 2 diabetes genetics research under a recently renewed grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. He also is searching for the genes involved in diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of adult blindness in the United States, through a separate NIH grant that also focuses on Starr County.

Dr. Hanis is principal investigator of the Starr County portion of the Family Blood Pressure Program, a research project funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to examine the genetics of hypertension. The project is led nationally by Dr. Eric Boerwinkle, also a professor of genetics in the UT-Houston School of Public Health Human Genetics Center.

Dr. Hanis also works with Dr. Sharon Brown of the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing on Dr. Brown's NIDDKD project, to use a culturally relevant approach to helping Starr County residents manage behavioral factors that influence type 2 diabetes, such as exercise and diet.

Common chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer are caused by a complex blend of genetic and environmental factors, including behavior, rather than by a single genetic flaw.

"The 10 leading causes of death fit into this category," Dr. Hanis said.

Dr. Hanis found that more than half of Starr County residents either have type 2 diabetes or are at risk for it. The genetic aspect of the disease is complex because it is of a familial nature, rather than strictly hereditary.

"Your risk for diabetes or heart disease is greater if your mother, father, sister or brother has it, but you won't necessarily get the disease," Dr. Hanis explains.

Environmental and lifestyle factors, such as obesity and lack of exercise, play a part in "turning on" genetic abnormalities that contribute to diseases that have this familial genetic aspect. Put together, all make research on diabetes and other chronic diseases a complex challenge with great potential for improving public health.

Dr. Hanis is author or co-author of more than 70 published articles on genetics, with particular emphasis on the prevalence of diabetes, obesity, hypertension and gall bladder disease among Mexican-Americans. He also is a member of the American Diabetes Association, the International Diabetes Federation and the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Association.

The UT-Houston School of Public Health's role in the Lower Rio Grande Valley has expanded to include a new satellite campus in Brownsville. Its first project is a massive community-based health assessment in the area. The satellite facility to be built on the UT-Brownsville campus is a division of the University of Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley Regional Academic Health Center scheduled for completion in fall 2001. The satellite is the school's fourth in Texas-the others are in El Paso, San Antonio and Dallas. The Brownsville satellite will have its own faculty, and will draw on the school's faculty in Houston and the other satellites, as well as local medical and public health professionals.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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