Chinese least likely to get cardiovascular disease
14 July 2010
Racial-ethnic groups living in a similar environment and with
access to universal healthcare differ strikingly in their cardiovascular
risk profiles according to a study presented last month at the World
Congress of Cardiology (WCC) Beijing, China.
Chinese people have the most favourable cardiovascular risk
profile, followed by White, South Asians and then Blacks according
to the study presented. Moreover, diabetes occurs 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% in Chinese to a high of 5.2% in
South Asians) and stroke (0.6% in Chinese to a high of 1.7% in South
Asians).
"Cardiovascular disease is a global health problem and even
though Chinese, South Asians and Blacks represent approximately 60%
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.