What role does ethnic ancestry (race) have to do with COPD? Yesterday’s information packed Harrison Medical Center/Better Breather’s support group meeting brought home the work ethic of the Norwegian immigrants I knew growing up and remember thinking I am glad to be born Norwegian American of immigrant parents.
That said, I thought of other races/ethnic immigrants to this
country and their same work ethic and realized that I don’t recall
seeing a person of obvious racial differences at any COPD meeting
I’ve attended in the years I’ve had COPD. (1997)
We all share the same American pride of heritage but none of it
matters with COPD or any chronic disease. Under the skin, we all
look the same: brain, heart, lungs, liver and so on. Disease
generally does not know race, religion, gender or age and does not
stop at borders. We are sisters and brothers under the skin – our
lungs are damaged, not our varied cultures and pride in them.
We have damaged lungs – permanently damaged yes, but we can get
educated how to help ourselves live a quality life – all of us.
Yesterday’s Better Breather’s meeting was a ‘don’t miss!’ for lung
disease patients and I would like to know why non-Caucasians were
missing?
I feel lucky in my heritage, as I know everyone feels about his or her heritage and culture. We share lung disease and should be equally educated as patients. As a Norwegian/American lung patient, what can I do to get you to these incredible meetings?
Speaker Aaron spoke to how he, as an exercise induced asthmatic child got over it in two years -I’ll tell you in the story I’m writing and posting soon, but you should have been there.
Take care of yourself, get educated because Harrison is getting
hot to educate patients. Hope to see you at next month’s
meeting.
Following is the African-American COPD story in Chest in 2009 and
the Asian-American COPD story 2011.
African-Americans with COPD Use Fewer Health Services
New research shows that African-Americans (AA) with chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) use fewer health services than
Caucasians with the condition. Researchers from the University of
Maryland compared health services utilization and cost outcomes in
4,723 AA patients and 4,021 Caucasians with COPD, asthma, or both.
After controlling for age, gender, cohort allocation, and
comorbidities, results showed that AA adults with COPD, asthma, or
coexisting asthma and COPD used fewer medical services and
accounted for lower medical costs than Caucasians.
The authors speculate that the differences in utilization and
medical costs may provide an explanation for the racial disparities
in outcomes of patients with COPD and asthma. The article is
published in the August issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal
of the American College of Chest Physicians.
http://www.chestnet.org/accp/article/african-americans-copd-use-fewer-health-services
Ethnicity and Risk of Hospitalization for Asthma and Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
Tran HN, Siu S, Iribarren C, Udaltsova N, Klatsky AL.
Departments of Medicine (H.N.T.) and Pulmonary Medicine (S.S.), and
the Division of Research (C.I., N.U., A.L.K.), Kaiser Permanente
Medical Care Program, Oakland, California.
PURPOSE:
To identify ethnic differences for risk of hospitalization for
asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
METHODS:
We undertook a cohort study with 126,019 participants: 55%
whites, 27% blacks, 11% Asians, and 4% Hispanics. To estimate
asthma and COPD risk, we used Cox proportional hazards models
adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, education, smoking, and
alcohol intake. End points were hospitalizations for asthma or
COPD.
RESULTS:
Compared with whites, relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for asthma among other groups were: blacks, 1.7 (1.4-2.0); Hispanics, 0.9 (0.6-1.4); and Asians, 1.6 (1.2-2.1). Among Asians, increased risk was concentrated in Filipino men and women and South Asian men. For COPD, whites were at highest risk; RR of blacks was 0.9 (0.7-1.0); Hispanics, 0.6 (0.3- 0.9); and Asians, 0.4 (0.3-0.6). COPD risk among Asians was lowest in Chinese with RR of 0.3 (0.1-0.5).
CONCLUSIONS:
Ethnic disparities in risk of asthma and COPD as well as between
both diseases exist, especially for Asian Americans, who have high
asthma risk and low COPD risk. While residual confounding for
smoking or other environmental factors could be partially
responsible, genetic factors in Asians may be involved in decreased
COPD risk.
Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21414801
The bottom line is anyone with lung/pulmonary disease needs to
become educated so that we can live the best life possible as long
as possible. Exercise makes a difference.
More later…thanks for reading… Sharon O’Hara
