Editorial
Cardiovascular risks and outcomes: ethnic variations in hypertensive patients
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Epidemiological studies of international variations in disease incidence have helped to generate and test hypotheses about the relative importance of genetic, environmental, social, and cultural factors in causing cardiovascular diseases.1 Studies of racial and ethnic variation within countries have also contributed in advancing such understanding. Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani people born on the Indian subcontinent (henceforth called South Asian) but living in England and Wales have a 40-50% higher mortality from coronary heart disease than the population average.2 3 The prevailing hypothesis explaining this excess is the insulin resistance hypothesis. Coronary heart disease, paradoxically, is comparatively low among Afro-Caribbeans,4 who share with South Asians a high prevalence of insulin resistance.
Another paradox concerns hypertension, one of the major coronary risk
factors, as ethnic variations in blood pressure do not parallel
variations in coronary heart disease. Prevalence of hypertension among
the Afro-Caribbean and African populations is high, but their risk of
death
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