Is it possible to determine your ethnicity through your blood?

Indian ethnicity and blood pressure?

• I am doing a Biology EEI (Extended Experimental Investigation) on blood pressure and pulse rate. My friend and I are the test subjects; she is of Indian Ethnicity and I am Caucasian (white). I need info on the difference in blood pressure/ pulse rate between our ethnicities as they differ. Her blood pressure is lower than mine but her pulse rate is higher. If someone could please give me a source I would appreciate it so much. Here is some further information on us: She is a vegetarian and has a diet of Fijian-Indian food (she was born in Fiji but moved to Australia when she was little) I am 160cm tall and she is 169cm. We both average around 59kg. I don't know if its relevant but we tested our blood pressure after different circumstances. The first was controlled, we were just sitting. The second we walked up and down 17 steps 10 times each. We sat in a room of 20 degrees celsius for 30 minutes and the last was drank a cup of coffee and tested after 30 minutes. In all the results her blood pressure was lower and her pulse was higher than mine. I think I may have read somewhere that in the case of blood pressure and pulse rate, someone of her ethnicity usually has results like that in comparison to someone of my ethnicity. I'm not 100% sure so I require background info so if someone could find me a link I would be so thankful. I was also unsure of what to class her ethnic race as because I've seen on a few websites that it would be classed as Asian and not black but another said that they can be classed as caucasian because of the skull structure. Its confusing to me.

• Answer:

  First to deal with questions regarding ethnicity. If you use the term Caucasian, then it would include both of you, this term has nothing to do with skin colour, which is almost useless in describing someone's ancestry. The website which said Caucasian described skull structure is correct, but it is not a good term to use as it has rather negative connotations. You could describe yourself as European, since that is the only part of the world in which fair skin is prevalent and you should describe your friend as being of Indian ancestry. Even these two terms are minimal in describing ethnicity in either of you. If you are looking on websites for data, then be careful to see who is included in any analysis. Asian may sometimes be used solely for people from the Indian subcontinent but it could equally be used to describe someone from any part of Asia - the latter would be useless as genetically Indians are far more closely related to Europeans than they are to the peoples of Eastern Asia. I also urge caution with your data. There is a lot of variation in pulse and blood pressure even within people of very similar ancestry. Blood pressure is individually set at in each person and that is the value the body will try to maintain throughout life (although of course the final value is an adult one). Pulse is highly affected by fitness, so if you are athletic and your friend is not, then that would be most likely explanation in variation of pulse rate. Also, Indians and Europeans share roughly the same tendencies to cardiovascular disease later in life, so one would expect the genetic make up of both to be similar in this regard. If it were me, I would drop the question regarding ethnicity since it is the least likely cause of variation, instead I would concentrate on a physiological explanation of what causes the innate differences between individuals.