rs73885319
APOL1 and kidney disease
What this position does
Two APOL1 variants protect against African sleeping sickness and, in two copies, substantially raise the risk of chronic kidney disease. They are essentially absent outside people of recent West African ancestry, and they explain a large part of the excess kidney disease burden in that population. This is one of the clearest cases where ancestry genuinely changes what a genetic result means.
What each result means
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies of the effect version AA | You do not carry it, which is true of most people worldwide This variant is absent. It is absent in most people worldwide. |
| One copy AG | One copy, which carries little or no raised kidney risk One copy carries little or no raised kidney risk. Carriers get the protection against sleeping sickness without the cost. |
| Two copies GG | Two copies, which is worth telling your doctor about Two risk copies are associated with a substantially higher lifetime risk of chronic kidney disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and hypertension-related kidney failure. This is genuinely actionable: blood pressure control and a simple annual kidney blood and urine test change outcomes, and it is worth telling your doctor. |
Worth knowing. This report reads only the G1 variant. The second risk variant, G2, is a small deletion that genotyping chips generally do not read, so a clear result here does not rule out carrying two risk copies overall.
How common each version is
| Ancestry group | G (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 25.9% | |
| American | 0.9% | |
| East Asian | 0.0% | |
| European | 0.0% | |
| South Asian | 0.0% |
1000 Genomes Project phase 3, via Ensembl, retrieved 2026-09-23. These groupings are coarse and flatten a great deal of internal diversity, particularly within Africa. A variant being common somewhere tells you where a piece of your ancestry probably comes from, and nothing else.
How many people carry each result
| Ancestry group | AA | AG | GG |
|---|---|---|---|
| African | 371 / 661 | 237 / 661 | 53 / 661 |
| European | 503 / 503 | 0 / 503 | 0 / 503 |
| East Asian | 504 / 504 | 0 / 504 | 0 / 504 |
| South Asian | 489 / 489 | 0 / 489 | 0 / 489 |
| American | 341 / 347 | 6 / 347 | 0 / 347 |
Counts of people, not modelled frequencies: every one of the 2,504 individuals sequenced by the 1000 Genomes Project phase 3, tallied by the genotype they carry. Deriving these from allele frequencies instead would assume random mating inside each group and undercount the homozygotes.
How to find out which you have
If you have taken a test with 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, TellMeGen or Living DNA, this position is very likely already in the raw data file they gave you. You do not need another test.
One thing to watch if you look it up by hand: testing companies report some positions from one DNA strand and some from the other, and the file does not say which. Read the letters as they appear and you will get the opposite of the truth for some positions. Sequencings resolves that automatically.
Source
Coordinates and allele pair verified against Ensembl GRCh37. Direction of effect verified against VEP protein consequences or 1000 Genomes population frequency. Category: Health-adjacent.
Where this fits
Common questions
What is rs73885319?
rs73885319 is a position in the APOL1 gene on chromosome 22. Two APOL1 variants protect against African sleeping sickness and, in two copies, substantially raise the risk of chronic kidney disease. They are essentially absent outside people of recent West African ancestry, and they explain a large part of the excess kidney disease burden in that population. This is one of the clearest cases where ancestry genuinely changes what a genetic result means.
What does it mean if I have GG at rs73885319?
Two copies, which is worth telling your doctor about. Two risk copies are associated with a substantially higher lifetime risk of chronic kidney disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and hypertension-related kidney failure. This is genuinely actionable: blood pressure control and a simple annual kidney blood and urine test change outcomes, and it is worth telling your doctor.
What does it mean if I have AA at rs73885319?
You do not carry it, which is true of most people worldwide. This variant is absent. It is absent in most people worldwide.
How do I find out my rs73885319 genotype?
If you have taken a home DNA test, this position is very likely in the raw data file you were given. Sequencings reads that file in your browser without uploading it, and resolves which DNA strand each position was reported from, which is the step most manual lookups get wrong.
This is reference information, not medical advice, and not a diagnosis. See the medical disclaimer. Category: Health-adjacent.