Younger Blacks More Prone to Heart Failure, New Research Shows

Black men and women are 20 times more likely to develop heart failure at a younger age than whites, a disparity which researchers chalk up to higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, and kidney problems among blacks.

One in 100 blacks will develop heart failure before reaching age 50, a rate which is 20 times higher than that for whites, according to researchers who published their results in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Heart failure – when the heart is no longer able to effectively pump blood throughout the body – has long been considered a disease of the elderly, but it is hitting blacks at an increasingly younger age, the researchers found. More urgent treatment of younger blacks for high blood pressure and other conditions may be necessary to prevent increasing heart-failure-related deaths.

Study Focuses on Thousands

For the study, researchers focused on data from more than 5,100 blacks and whites in Chicago; Minneapolis; Birmingham, Ala.; and Oakland, Calif. People studied were between the ages of 18 and 30 when they joined the study in the 1980s.

Over the years, all but one of the 27 people who developed heart failure before age 50 were black. Five people in the study, all of them black, died from heart failure. The blood pressure levels and weights of study participants, black and white, were similar at the onset of the study, researchers said.

However, a disproportionate number of blacks compared to whites developed high blood pressure in their young adulthood and went on to suffer heart failure. Also, blacks were more likely to develop diabetes and chronic kidney disease and other severe cardiac conditions. Researchers said income levels, genetics, and living conditions might play a role in contributing to the dramatically higher rate of heart failure among blacks.

Fewer Blacks Got Proper High Blood-Pressure Treatment

People in the study who were diagnosed with high blood pressure were all urged to see their physicians, but researchers found that only 25% of blacks received proper treatment for the condition. Researchers blamed both physicians and patients for the low rate of successful treatment of high blood pressure, which is a leading cause of heart failure.

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