Serious as a Heart Attack: Young Blacks Develop Coronary Failure at 20 Times Whites' Rate

Trouble brewing

A 20-year study conducted by U.C. San Francisco researchers demonstrated alarmingly disproportionate results between whites and blacks when it comes to developing heart failure by age 50. Of the 5,115 subjects in the study, 27 developed heart failure by the time they were in their mid-40s, with the average age being 39. Of those, 26 were black.

So, while the roughly 1 percent rate of heart failure for blacks in the study may sound low -- it's 20 times higher than whites' rate.

"The cumulative incidence of heart failure before the age of 50 years was 1.1%  in black women, 0.9% in black men, 0.08%  in white women, and 0% in white men," notes the study,  which was published in yesterday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Many of those struck down by heart failure developed red-flag conditions decades before -- such as obesity, chronic kidney disease, and hypertension (75 percent of those who later developed heart failure had hypertension before they were 40). 
 
"Through this long-term study, we saw the clear links between the development of risk factors and the onset of disease one to two decades later," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, A UCSF professor and the study's lead author. "Targeting these risk factors for screening and treatment during young adulthood could be important for heart failure prevention."

The 5,115 participants -- 52 percent of whom were black; 55 percent were women -- were drawn from pools of 18-to-30-year-olds in the 1980s hailing from Oakland, Birmingham, Chicago, and Minneapolis.

The study also indirectly proved that it's nearly impossible to write anything flip or funny about research involving young black people dying of heart attacks.

Photo   |   Andrew Petro