Lifetime discrimination may increase risk of hypertension among African Americans

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/aha-ldm062920.php


News Release 1-Jul-2020
American Heart Association


Lifetime discrimination is a chronic stressor that may increase the risk for hypertension also known as high blood pressure, in African Americans, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

"Previous studies have shown that discrimination affects African Americans' health; however, this research is one of the first large, community-based studies to suggest an association between discrimination over a lifetime and the development of hypertension among a large sample of African American men and women," said Allana T. Forde, Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's first author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

"African Americans continue to be disproportionately affected by hypertension, making it imperative to identify the drivers of hypertension in this population," Forde said. "Greater lifetime discrimination was associated with an increased risk for hypertension among African Americans in this study, which reflects the impact of cumulative exposure to stressors over one's lifetime and the physiological reactions to stress that contribute to deleterious health outcomes."

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