BACKGROUND The mechanism of enhanced vascular reactivity in young blacks, which may play a part in the development of hypertension, has not been defined. To determine the contribution of blunted vasodilatation mediated by beta 2-adrenergic receptors to this phenomenon, we compared forearm blood-flow responses to isoproterenol in young black and white normotensive men. METHODS We used venous-o...

Differences in cellular Na+ and K+ regulation may relate to the pathogenesis of essential hypertension and the predisposition of blacks to this disease. To explore these tenets, we examined several aspects of cellular Na+ homeostasis in serially passed, cultured skin fibroblasts from 30 subjects (15 hypertensive blacks and whites and normotensive subjects matched for sex, age, and race.) Fibrob...

Normative standards are provided for permanent tooth mineralization stages for blacks and whites of the middle southern United States. The data cover tooth development from 3.5 to 13 years of age. Females develop more rapidly than males, and blacks are nearly twice as sexually dimorphic (7.2%) as whites (3.7%). Within each sex, blacks achieve mineralization stages significantly earlier, by abou...

Understanding the role (particularly the mechanisms of action) that physical activity plays in the development of hypertension among blacks is important for risk reduction efforts and public policy actions, especially because blacks bear the highest burden of hypertension, and crosssectional studies suggest that physical activity may be associated with reduced hypertension in blacks (1). We the...

Since the release of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) (1) and the establishment of the federal Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Care Continuum Initiative (2), federal efforts have accelerated to improve and increase HIV testing, care, and treatment and to reduce HIV-related disparities in the United States. National HIV Surveillance System (NHSS)* data are used to monitor progress toward...

In the United States, blacks have higher death rates from colon cancer than whites, and the survival disparity may be due in part to differences in screening programs and acute medical care in counties with a high concentration of blacks. We studied 148,947 Medicare beneficiaries with newly diagnosed colorectal cancer in 1989-1991 who resided in the 329 most populous counties in the United Stat...

Investigators have reported variable findings regarding the role of race in diurnal blood pressure patterns. We performed a review and meta-analysis of this literature to identify the overall effect of race on circadian blood pressure patterns. Eighteen studies involving 2852 participants were reviewed. Meta-analyses were conducted using effect sizes calculated from the data provided directly i...

Our specific aim in this study was to assess the family resemblance for llplds and lipoproteins in blacks randomly selected from the Princeton School District's Family Study cohort, and compare the family resemblance of lipids and lipoproteins between the blacks and whites from the same cohort. There were 160 white and 59 black nuclear families ascertained through randomly selected family study...

OBJECTIVE To determine the burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on all-cause mortality in Blacks and Whites from four US communities. METHODS We determined prospectively the risk of death through December 2004 in relation to baseline (1987-1989) COPD status in 10,333 Black and White participants of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. RESULTS Over a mean f...

The amount of help given to Blacks versus Whites is often assumed to reflect underlying levels of racism (or lack thereof). This meta-analysis assessed discrimination against Blacks in helping studies. The overall effect size for the 48 hypothesis tests did not show universal discrimination against Blacks (d = .03, p = .103). However, consistent with the predictions of aversive racism, discrimi...