DALLAS (AP) - Black women are twice as likely as white women to suffer heart disease, yet are less likely to be given certain standard drugs, a study found.
The findings, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, show that black women also are twice as likely suffer heart attacks and deaths from heart disease. The gap is partly because black women have more severe heart disease and risk factors such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the study said.
The study was less clear about why black women receive less care for the disease.
The four-year study, led by Ashish K. Jha, a fellow in general medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard School of Health, looked at 2,699 women from 20 medical centers nationwide. Eight percent of the women - or 218 - were black.
Researchers found that the black women had higher rates of blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol - all risk factors that lead to heart disease and can be treated with medicine.
About 56 percent of the black women had acceptable blood pressure, compared with 63 percent for white women. Black women had acceptable cholesterol levels 30 percent of the time, white women 38 percent of the time.
"Those differences may not seem large, but given the fact that black women are at such an increased risk, treatment should be more aggressive," Jha said.
Black women were 10 percent less likely to get aspirin and 27 percent less likely to get cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. Black women, however, got more higher-priced drugs, such ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers.
Researchers could not pinpoint why black women were getting less treatment, but considered economic differences and doctor bias as possible factors.
William S. Weintraub and Viola Vaccarina, professors at Emory University in Atlanta, said in an accompanying editorial that more research is necessary to understand the disparities and close the gap.
"Clearly these black women are at great risk," they said.
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On the Net:
American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org
