New data shows racial-ethnic groups living in similar environment differ in cardiovascular risk profiles

Racial-ethnic groups living in a similar environment and with access to universal healthcare differed strikingly in their cardiovascular risk profiles according to new data presented today at the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) Scientific Sessions in Beijing, China.

Chinese people have the most favorable cardiovascular risk profile, followed by White, South Asians and then Blacks according to the study presented. Moreover, diabetes occurred earlier in South Asian men and women, and Black women than in people of White or Chinese origin. A similar racial-ethnic gradient was observed in the prevalence of heart disease (3.2 per cent in Chinese to a high of 5.2 per cent in South Asians) and stroke (0.6 per cent in Chinese to a high of 1.7 per cent in South Asians).

"Cardiovascular disease is a global health problem and even though Chinese, South Asians and Blacks represent approximately 60 per cent of the world's population and contribute significantly to the global burden of this disease, most of our knowledge about cardiovascular risk is derived from White populations," said Maria Chiu, Doctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Clinical Evaluation Sciences, Toronto, Canada. "The data generated by our study will be invaluable for designing evidence-based prevention programs and for planning health services in an increasingly multi-ethnic world."

The population-based study compared cardiovascular risk factors and diseases of some 163,797 participants (154,653 White, 3,038 Chinese, 3,364 South Asian, 2,742 Black) in Statistics Canada's National Population Health Survey and Canadian Community Health Surveys between 1996 and 2007. Direct age-sex standardized methods were used to estimate ethnic-specific prevalence of eight cardiovascular risk factors, heart disease and stroke.