Although the inclusion of multiple populations in GWAS is important to gain a comprehensive understanding of the genetic influences on disease risk, there are few studies of AD and other phenotypes in non-European ancestry populations, the most studied of which are African-ancestry populations, which account for only 3% of GWAS reported in the PubMed database (Peprah et al., 2015). To date, only one AD GWAS has identified GWS loci in AAs (Gelernter et al., 2014a), probably because the size of available African ancestry samples is generally much smaller than for European ancestry. We urge the newly formed collaborative groups to perform analyses in subjects of non-European ancestry, if feasible, as the identification of loci contributing to AD risk in a range of populations will yield a fuller understanding of the disorder.
