Inbreeding in a Brazilian general hospital.

A group of 925 adult in-patients of a Brazilian general hospital was matched by race (subdivided in five groups) and age with a group of 925 of their visitors, who were taken as controls. Illiteracy increases from Whites to Blacks and is significantly more prevalent among the patients than among their respective controls. Inbreeding, on the contrary, increases from Blacks to Whites. White patients showed a significantly higher rate of inbreeding than their corresponding controls. The difference is also significant for the fraction Whites plus Light Mulattoes, but not for the other race subgroups. As regards the total, the significance is present only in a one-tailed distribution. It is concluded that the inbreeding load (if any) acting on the total of the patients is negligible; it seems significantly different from 0 only among Whites. No inbreeding effect could be verified, however, on any particular condition among the Whites. Estimates of the number of morbid equivalents per gamete (morbons) revealed values which are both significantly (among Whites and Whites plus Light Mulattoes) and non-significantly (among the other racial subgroups) different from zero. These estimates reflect the situation in the sample which has been artificially organized to contain 50% of patients.