Where to Focus Efforts to Reduce the Black-White Disparity in Stroke Mortality: Incidence Versus Case Fatality?
George Howard1, Claudia S Moy2, Virginia J Howard2
1From the Departments of Biostatistics (G.H., S.E.J.) and Epidemiology (V.J.H.), University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health; Office of Clinical Research, NINDS/NIH, Bethesda, MD (C.S.M.); Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA (L.A.M.); Department of Neurology, University of Cincinnati, OH (D.O.K., B.M.K., M.L.F.); Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Indianapolis (F.W.U.); Department of Epidemiology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC (E.Z.S.); Department of General Internal Medicine, Weill Cornell School of Medicine, New York, NY (M.M.S., V.G.W.); and Department of Medicine, University of Vermont School of Medicine, Burlington (M.C.). ghoward@uab.edu.
Background And Purpose:
At age 45 years, blacks have a stroke mortality ≈3× greater than their white counterparts, with a declining disparity at older ages. We assess whether this black-white disparity in stroke mortality is attributable to a black-white disparity in stroke incidence versus a disparity in case fatality.
Methods:
We first assess if black-white differences in stroke mortality within 29 681 participants in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort reflect national black-white differences in stroke mortality and then assess the degree to which black-white differences in stroke incidence or 30-day case fatality after stroke contribute to the disparities in stroke mortality.
Results:
The pattern of stroke mortality within the study mirrors the national pattern, with the black-to-white hazard ratio of ≈4.0 at age 45 years decreasing to ≈1.0 at age 85 years. The pattern of black-to-white disparities in stroke incidence shows a similar pattern but no evidence of a corresponding disparity in stroke case fatality.
Conclusions:
These findings show that the black-white differences in stroke mortality are largely driven by differences in stroke incidence, with case fatality playing at most a minor role. Therefore, to reduce the black-white disparity in stroke mortality, interventions need to focus on prevention of stroke in blacks.
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