J Natl Med Assoc
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HIV/AIDS continues to create a significant health crisis in African-American communities and health disparities within the United States. Understanding African-American sexuality within a culturally congruent and ethnocentric approach is critical to decreasing the HIV infection and transmission rates for African Americans. ⋯ Research trainings for new and established investigators and collaborations among health, community, religious, political organizations, and historically black colleges and universities are needed to disseminate relevant HIV prevention messages. Conducting research to better understand African-American sexuality will facilitate the development of behavioral interventions that address health, HIV and mental health risk reduction within the context of African-American life.
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African Americans are at greater risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than European Americans or Asians. They also bear a disproportionately greater burden from type-2 diabetes mellitus. Not as much access to healthcare and less intensive use of available therapies may explain some of these disparities. ⋯ In addition to lifestyle approaches, achieving aggressive goals for blood pressure (< or =130/80 mmHg) and low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (<100 mg/dL, or <70 mg/dL for patients at very high cardiovascular risk, including those with diabetes) will necessitate the use of effective pharmacologic therapies. Clinical trial data indicate that antihypertensive regimens, particularly those that include a diuretic, are as effective in African Americans as in other racial/ethnic groups. Moreover, potent statins have been shown to decrease low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol to goal levels in African-American patients.
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Editorial Historical Article
The use of historical vital statistics when analyzing African-descended population heterogeneity.
This paper explores population substructure through an analysis of 726 individual death certificates representing African-American and West-Indian immigrant populations who died from tubercular infection in Manhattan, New York City, NY, 1890-1930. From the death certificate data, four classes of tubercular infection were derived: pulmonary, chronic pulmonary, acute/miliary tuberculosis and tubercular meningitis. ⋯ Through a Chi-squared analysis, the data demonstrated that: 1) color did not significantly influence the type of tuberculosis an individual died from, and 2) region of birth influenced the type of tuberculosis an individual died from. The results of this analysis lead to the conclusion that historical vital records, specifically death certificate data, are useful when exploring historical population substructure.
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Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) is a progressive disorder that usually culminates in right ventricular failure and death without treatment. ⋯ African Americans with IPAH exhibit a substantially increased mortality compared with Caucasians, particularly African-American women.