Thursday, March 19, 2009
ATLANTA (AP) — One in 100 black men and women develop heart failure before age 50, according to one of the first long-term studies to look at the life-threatening condition in younger adults.
The research suggests blacks in that age group suffer the condition at a rate 20 times higher than whites do — an astounding difference more pronounced than earlier studies had indicated.
However, those findings are based on a very small number of heart-failure cases, the authors said, so more study is needed.
The take-away message is that doctors should be more aggressive about treating young blacks who may be at risk, some experts said.
The research appears in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Heart failure occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump sufficient blood through the body. It’s often fatal but not always — some suffer disabling shortness of breath, fatigue and retention of fluids in their legs or lungs.