(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- When it comes to asthma, new research shows black patients are more likely to visit the emergency room or be hospitalized for the condition than white patients.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, studied 678 patients who were hospitalized for asthma between 2000 and 2004. Patients were interviewed after being discharged about their disease severity and how asthma impacted their lives. There were 524 white patients and 154 black patients in the study.
 

Though researchers found no significant differences in disease severity, health status or medication use; they did find blacks were significantly more likely to have had an outpatient visit related to their asthma than whites. They also found 35.7 percent of black patients made a trip to the emergency room for their asthma, compared to just 21 percent of white patients. Of the patients hospitalized for asthma, 26.6 percent were black and 15.3 percent were white. These differences held true even after adjusting for socioeconomic status and differences in asthma therapy.

Authors of the study write, “The reasons underlying the racial disparities observed in this study are not clear, although they are likely to be complex. These findings suggest that genetic differences may underlie these racial disparities.”

Researchers conclude, “Further investigation of genetic difference and gene-environment interactions in black populations is needed to better understand the reasons underlying these racial disparities in asthma morbidity.”

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2007;167:1846-1852