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Black women who live in poverty have the greatest chance of suffering from heart disease and stroke. According to a new study, the increased risk of heart disease or stroke associated with living in poverty is largest for Black women and people under age 50.
The study looked at a Mississippi African-American population, and found that women with the lowest “socioeconomic position” were more than twice as likely to have heart disease or stroke as those with the highest socioeconomic position, reports The Huffington Post.
Researchers analyzed a previous long-term study of 5,301 African Americans, ages 21 to 94. A majority of them were women and half were followed for more than seven years. During this period, 362 cases of cardiovascular events like heart attack or stroke occurred.
Shockingly, low-income men and women under age 50 were more than three times as likely to experience cardiovascular problems compared to peers with the highest socioeconomic status, says lead author Samson Y. Gebreab of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.
“African Americans with low SES (socioeconomic status) are more likely to have higher rates of obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and physical inactivity compared to their counterparts of higher SES,” Gebreab told Reuters Health by email.
There could be other reasons as well.
“Another possible explanation is that African-American women of low SES experience higher rates of psychosocial stressors such as chronic stress, depression, discrimination and are more likely to live and work in a worse physical and social environment,” he said.
Having far fewer resources at their disposal to cope with these stressors creates a recipe for a higher risk of heart attack and stroke in African American women of lower SES, Gebreab said.
Also, according to the study team, participants with higher adult socioeconomic position were less likely to smoke or drink. They also tended to have better quality diets and higher levels of physical activity, with lower body mass index and blood pressure and fewer cases of high blood pressure or diabetes versus the low-socioeconomic status group.
“Although we have not accounted for health care access in our study, these (low SES) groups of people often also have less access to health care and encounter barriers to CVD (cardiovascular disease) related diagnosis and treatment,” Gebreab said.
