Background: We estimated European ancestry in U.S. Hispanics using HFE p.C282Y (c.845G > A; rs1800562), a highly informative autosomal marker of European ancestry. Methods: We tabulated published p.C282Y allele frequencies in U.S. Hispanic control/population region/city cohorts. We assumed that Hispanics inherited p.C282Y from European ancestors only. We defined European ancestry ( M ) of each cohort as the quotient of its published p.C282Y frequency by the published aggregate p.C282Y frequency in Iberian Spaniards. We compared the present average region/city values of M and the aggregate M with previous European ancestries of U.S. Hispanics estimated using multiple ancestry-informative markers (AIMs). Results: There were 14,472 Hispanics (nine region/city cohorts; aggregate p.C282Y frequency 0.0176 509/28,944 95% confidence interval: 0.0159, 0.0189). There were 12,297 Spaniards (34 population/control cohorts; aggregate p.C282Y frequency 0.0291 (716/24,594) 0.0271, 0.0313). Nine region/city estimates of M differed 2.6-fold: Alabama 1.0000, California/Irvine 0.5395, California/Oakland 0.6186; California/San Diego 0.9381; Connecticut 0.6873; District of Columbia 0.3883; Hawaii 0.6976; New York 0.4330; and Oregon 1.0000. The average of these nine region/city estimates of M was 0.7003. The aggregate estimate of M in the present 14,472 Hispanics was 0.6048 0.5369, 0.6728. The range of estimated European ancestries in 29,365 Hispanics in eight previous studies that used multiple AIMs was 0.502–0.683. Conclusions: European ancestry in U.S. Hispanics estimated using p.C282Y frequencies varies across regions/cities. The average nine region/city and aggregate European ancestry estimates in the present U.S. Hispanics are similar to those in eight previous studies that used multiple AIMs.
Barton et al. (Tue,) studied this question.