Striking ethnic health disparity – blacks dying due to lack of vitamin D – Nov 2011

Vitamin D and Cardiovascular Disease: Potential Role in Health Disparities

Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
Volume 22, Number 4, November 2011, Supplement; E-ISSN: 1548-6869 Print ISSN: 1049-2089; DOI: 10.1353/hpu.2011.0161
Jorge N. Artaza, Sandra Contreras, Leah A. Garcia, Rajnish Mehrotra, Gary Gibbons, Ralph Shohet, David Martins, Keith C. Norris
The Johns Hopkins University Press

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), which includes coronary artery disease and stroke, is the leading cause of mortality in the nation.

Excess CVD morbidity and premature mortality in the African American community is one of the most striking examples of racial/ ethnic disparities in health outcomes.

African Americans also suffer from increased rates of hypovitaminosis D, which has emerged as an independent risk factor for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.

This overview examines the potential role of hypovitaminosis D as a contributor to racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD).

We review the epidemiology of vitamin D and CVD in African Americans and the emerging biological roles of vitamin D in key CVD signaling pathways that may contribute to the epidemiological findings and provide the foundation for future therapeutic strategies for reducing health disparities.

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See also VitaminDWiki

• Overview Dark Skin and Vitamin D
• All items in Dark Skin and vitamin D 467 items
• Differences in black and non-black mortality and vitamin D – Oct 2012
• Dark skin associated with low vitamin D and obesity-related diseases – Sept 2011
• Lack of vitamin D closely associated with black health disparities – Nov 2010 - Great charts
• Vitamin D Council vs FDA concerning vitamin D deficiency in blacks and others - June 2011
• Do blacks have a 5 year life penalty due to low vitamin D
• Blacks may not need as much Vitamin D many articles
• Vitamin D insufficiency in UK youths – 37X more likely if dark skin – July 2011
• Hypothesis that lack of vitamin D increases blood pressure in blacks – July 2010
• 88 % of African immigrants to Melborne had less than 20 ng of vitamin D
• 82 % of black US adults less than 20 ng of vitamin D – Jan 2011

The items in Cardiovascular and Dark Skin are listed here:

The health disparity for Blacks is almost the same as having a low level of vitamin D - see following table

	Black Disparity	16 vs 26 ng/ml
breast cancer	1.34	1.26
colorectal cancer	1.43	1.44
cardiovascular disease	1.29	1.27
all-cause mortality	1.26	1.26

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See also web

• A-Fib Is More Dangerous for Blacks Than Whites NYT June 2016
  "Compared with white people with A-fib, blacks with the condition were more than twice as likely to have a stroke, 42 percent more likely to go into heart failure, 76 percent more likely to have coronary heart disease, and nearly twice as likely to die prematurely."