Cardiovascular disease varies widely among Asian American ethnic groups, highlighting the need to study each separately when it comes to prevention and treatment, new research shows.
Asians are the fastest growing racial group in this country. Their population is about 24 million, making up 7% of the U.S. population, and nearly 40% of them are of Chinese descent, according to census data. Although they are a highly diverse population, there is little research into how cardiovascular disease and its risk factors differ among them.
In the new study, researchers examined data from the National Health Interview Survey of nearly 13 million Asian adults from 2013 to 2018. They were divided into four groups. Chinese, Asian Indians, and Filipinos were the three largest Asian ethnic groups in the country, with the fourth group being people of other Asian heritage.
The findings were presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting in Philadelphia in November. These are considered preliminary until the full results are published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Cardiovascular health among Asian Americans is “complex,” said Sudisha Perera, a medical student at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and the study’s principal investigator. “These results demonstrated clear disparities within the Asian American population, particularly Filipino adults, who were at higher burden and risk of disease.”
He said health behaviors and social determinants of health, such as education, health insurance and income, did not fully explain the differences between the groups. “But what we found in our research is that smoking rates among Filipino adults are high.”
Perera said more research is needed into the causes of disparities, adding that Asian communities are too often seen as monolithic in national public health efforts.
Perera said the study was still limited by self-reported data that aggregated certain subgroups. “Although we stuck to the major subgroups available in the database, other Asian communities, such as the Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese communities, also merit a thorough and holistic analysis of cardiovascular disease. He also called for future research to examine how immigration is associated with heart health patterns among diverse groups of Asian Americans.
Dr. Latha Palaniappan, an internist and professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University in California, agreed with Perera that the study’s results demonstrate a critical need for further research. He said there is a particular lack of research into which groups in Asia are most at risk for different types of stroke.
“Practical precision medicine requires more data on the differences in this diverse and growing population, not just in cardiovascular disease, but in cancer, mental health, asthma, and more,” Palaniappan said. Current research.
Asians make up a small percentage of clinical trial participants in the U.S., and “when Asians are included, they are often lumped together, which may lead to differences in disease prevalence and treatment among diverse subgroups.” “It hides important differences in the
He encouraged more Asian Americans to participate in clinical trials, saying, “We can ensure that drugs and devices are properly tested in all populations they are intended to be treated.”
Check out more news from Scientific Sessions.
