Genes don't explain higher blood pressure among African-Americans

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A new study shows that lifestyle and socioeconomics may help explain why black Americans tend to have higher blood pressure.
We already know that African-Americans suffer more from high blood pressure than the rest of the population. It's tempting to think the reason must be genetic. Yet this conclusion has come from black people in the USA alone, not from other black populations.

In a new study, researchers at Loyola University, Illinois, looked at blood pressure among black populations in Nigeria, Jamaica and the US, and among white populations in the US, Canada and five European countries. This shows a wide variance of high blood pressure. Among populations of African origin, it ranges from 14 per cent to 44 per cent, while in whites it ranges from 27 per cent to 55 per cent.

Black people in Nigeria actually have a rate of high blood pressure that's lower than among whites. The incidence of high blood pressure goes up with the transition to an industrialized lifestyle. In Nigerians, it is 13 per cent, in Jamaicans 29 per cent and in black Americans 44 per cent. So environmental factors - which can be modified - clearly play a role in high blood pressure among black people.

Source
BMC Medicine 4th January 2005 (www.biomedcentral.com)