Black men, women are more prone to suffer coronary disease says study

Study led by University of Alabama doctors state black men and women are twice likely to die of coronary heart disease as white men and women.

The death rates from the heart attacks have dipped since the 1970s, but the statement is true for whites than for blacks.

The studies have also shown a wide gap between whites and blacks in the heart disease deaths and in heart-attack hospitalizations.

The paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association includes 24,443 participants who did not have coronary heart disease when they were first enrolled between the year 2003 and 2007, and they were followed through December 2009 for about 4.2 years.

During that time, there were a total of 659 coronary heart disease patients.  When adjusted for region of residence and age, black men were 15% more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease.

Further, the black women were 48% more likely than white women, though women fared better than men in general. It is stated that both men and women bore roughly double the risk of death from coronary heart disease as compared to their white counterparts.

Though, the blacks and whites in the study were of the same average age, the blacks suffered more risk factors associated with disease of the heart. They were also most likely smoke and have diabetes, high blood pressure and higher body mass index and lower kidney function.

Another study looked at the risk factors for cardiovascular disease in more than 15,000 Latino patients, including those of Mexican, Cuban and South American backgrounds. They found that 80% of men and 71% of women had at one risk factor and 25% of Puerto Ricans had at least three.