High Blood Pressure Study Finds Blacks Afflicted More

High blood pressure afflicts twice as many black women as white women both in slum areas where emotional stress is high and in middle class neighborhoods where it is low, according to preliminary findings in a research project released today. D r . Ernest H a r b u r g , University of Michigan professor of psychology who heads the project, says, however, that the relationship of high blood pressure to race, sex, and neighborhood living stress is only secondary in this first scientifically exact study of its kind. "Our pritnary purpose is to discover a practical method to find answers to one of the great human questions - how much of our health do we inherit and how much is the result of our environment or certain factors in it. "Our subject is high blood pressure, but if we have a Itechnique that will work for it, then we think the same method will work in studies of other human characteristics and health factors," he says. The research project is supported by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Michigan Heart Association, a Michigan United Fund agency. Working with Harburg on the project are Prof. M. Anthony Schork of the U-M School of Public Health, Thomas P. Smedes, research associate in psychology, and John C. Erfurt, analysis specialist. In one slum, high stress area in Detroit, 19 per cent of the black women have high blood pressure as compared to 9 per cent of the white women in a comparable slum, high stress area. In a Detroit low stress, middle class neighborhood, 10 per cent of the black women have high blood pressure as compared to 5 per cent of the white women in a similar neighborhood, the U - M researchers discovered. For men, the differences are less, with 20 per cent of all black men studied having high blood pressure, compared to 14 per cent of the white men. More middle class black men have the disease t h a n slum-dwelling white men, Harold Arnow of the Michigan Heart Association says about the study. The neighborhood they live in is related to the blood pressure of women to a much greater extent than that of men. Women who live in high stress neighborhoods, regardless of race, have high blood pressure twice as often as middle class women. In general, more men have high blood pressure than similarly situated women. About the same percentage of middle class white men have high blood pressure as middle class black men, but in both cases the number is more than twice that of middle class white women, the researchers found. Computing conclusions from the study will take more than two years, after which social and health recommendations will be made, Harburg said. "After this first research is finished, we plan to move ahead with the project and set up a clinic in Detroit to examine 3,000 r a n d o m 1 y selected persons to learn the connection between physiological an d blood chemical conditions and environment, high blood pressure and hypertensive heart disease. "In other words, does the stress of living in a ghetto cause the human body to genérate a factor, chemical or otherwise, which in turn leads to high blood pressure? How much of this tendency is genetic? We need to know these things," he says. "When our tabulations are finished we will give them to the chief genetic consultant, Dr. William J. Schuil, professor of human genetics at the University of Michigan who is internationally known for his research on the atomic bomb populations in Japan. "We believe Prof. Schuil will give us our first answers to the question - how much of high blood pressure is due to genetics (inherited) and how much to the environment," he says. "In each of the family sets, we expect to measure a genetic factor from relationship of the index with his sibling and his cousin. The spouse will supply a comparison to assess the effects of local environment, including diet and home life, while the unrelated stranger will be the control for neighborhood factors, including crime, overcrowding, recreation, air pollution and others," he says. Three waves of interviewers went through the four selected Detroit áreas in the first part ofthestudy. Groups of 40 census takers were followed by a group of verifiers, who in turn were followed by 30 nurses trained to do interviewing. Total cost of the first part of the study will be about $450,000.