Discovering the Full Spectrum of Cardiovascular Disease: Minority Health Summit 2003: Report of the Basic Science Writing Group

Discovering the Full Spectrum of Cardiovascular Disease: Minority Health Summit 2003: Report of the Basic Science Writing Group -- Benjamin et al. 111 (10): e120 -- Circulation
Despite considerable overall improvement in the clinical
prevalence and outcome of cardiovascular disease in the
US population during the past 50 years, striking disparities in
disease burden plague specific racial/ethnic subgroups. Black
patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in particular have
increased morbidity and mortality as compared with white
patients. For example, a black man between 45 and 65 years
old is 4 times more likely to have a stroke than his white
counterpart. Even when accounting for access to high-quality
health care, ethnic minorities bear a higher burden of obesity,
type 2 diabetes mellitus, and hypertension as compared with
whites. The mechanisms for these disparities remain incompletely
understood but likely include a combination of genetic,
environmental, and socioeconomic factors. If recent
advances in basic science are to be exploited to reduce
disparities in cardiovascular health care, then the emerging
disciplines in human genetics, biological sciences, and molecular
medicine are likely to afford us unprecedented opportunities
for deciphering the complex mechanisms involving
race/ethnicity, genetic differentiation, allele frequency disparities,
and gene– environment interactions.