Speech as a biomarker for supported diagnosis of major depressive disorder using self-supervised representations.

Cancer continues to be one of the leading global health challenges, with an estimated 20 million new cases and 10 million deaths in 2022 alone. Despite considerable advances in prevention, early detection, and treatment, substantial disparities persist in cancer incidence, presentation and survival outcomes across population groups identified by geographical region, ethnicity or income level. People of South Asian ancestry, who comprise nearly a quarter of the global population and are one of the fastest-growing minority groups in Western countries—including the United Kingdom (8.5%), Canada (7.1%), Australia (6.6%), and the United States (1.5%)—remain severely underrepresented in healthcare research and genomic studies. Historically, South Asian migrants to Western nations have exhibited lower overall cancer incidence compared to their host populations, particularly for malignancies such as breast, lung, colorectal, and prostate cancer—diseases that collectively account for a substantial proportion of cancer morbidity and mortality in Western countries. However, growing evidence indicates a rapid convergence in cancer incidence rates between South Asians and their host populations, especially with increasing age and length of residence. Furthermore, South Asian patients are disproportionately diagnosed at younger ages or with more advanced-stage disease compared to their White counterparts, a disparity often attributed to lower participation in routine cancer screening programmes. While socio-cultural barriers and health care system factors contribute to these disparities, such reasoning may not fully account for the observed differences in cancers that lack standardised population-based screening protocols. South Asians experience a disproportionately high burden of chronic health conditions, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, central obesity, and chronic viral hepatitis. These conditions are well-established risk factors for several malignancies—notably liver, colorectal, pancreatic, and endometrial cancers—and are thought to have a strong inherited genetic component in South Asian populations. However, our understanding of the genetic basis of complex diseases, including cancer, remains largely biased towards populations of European ancestry. To date, individuals of South Asian descent have constituted only about 2% of participants in published genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Large, diverse resources such as the UK Biobank (~1%), the All of Us Research Programme (~1%), and the Mass General Brigham Biobank (<1%) still include insufficient South Asian representation, limiting the ability to conduct meaningful genetic analyses of cancer risk. This persistent underrepresentation significantly limits our ability to fully understand cancer biology, improve risk prediction, and develop personalised therapeutic strategies for this growing, diverse population.