African Americans are hit by higher blood pressure rates than whites and Latinos as the non-Hispanic whites age, health researchers found.
Yet there are no vaccines preventing high blood pressure in young people. And there are no non-pharmaceutical treatments that can help prevent high blood pressure in teens and young adults.
Researchers found blacks aged 19 to 64 have a higher prevalence of hypertension than whites of the same age. For the same group, the difference was particularly wide among blacks 19-24.
While both races have seen similar population declines in the past two decades, researchers think doctors are becoming more aware of hypertension in blacks, said researcher Meghan Faulkner, senior adviser in health equity at the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Minority Health.
In the report, the authors noted black teenage girls were three times more likely to be admitted to hospitals for hypertension as compared to white teenage girls. For black teenagers aged 14 to 17, there was an 11-fold difference in the prevalence of hypertension. For blacks aged 18 to 44, the differences were 55-fold. In contrast, while white teenagers born between 1966 and 1980 were four times more likely to be admitted to hospitals for hypertension, the same for whites born after 1972 was only a 4-fold difference.