Health inequalities in precision medicine: A systematic review

Precision medicine aims to revolutionise healthcare by providing personalised treatments based on individual genetic variations. A systematic review was conducted to explore ethnic inequalities in precision medicine, focusing on representation of ethnic minorities or indigenous minority groups in the reporting of genomic research in any healthcare setting in the UK or other high-income countries with similar healthcare systems. Seven electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, ProQuest Central, ASSIA and Scopus) were searched from inception to October 2022. Two authors independently screened papers, extracted data, and assessed quality. This review included 137 studies and a narrative synthesis was performed. The review included both genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and related studies of polygenic risk scores, and consistently identified that these studies failed to report or inadequately reported genomic results in certain ethnic minorities or indigenous minority groups. Downstream this compromises the value of this research to improve genomic services for multi-ethnic populations in High-income countries. This can be improved by purposefully recruiting participants from these underrepresented communities.Review registration: Registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) in November 2022; ID: CRD42022371245.