FRIDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- African ancestry does not
explain why black Americans are more likely than whites to have
high blood pressure, a new study says. But there is a
significant association between low education levels and high
blood pressure in blacks. The findings dispel the long-held
belief that West African ancestry is a major reason for high
rates of hypertension among black Americans, according to lead
author Amy Non, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health &
Society Scholar at Harvard University. High blood pressure can
lead to stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, blindness and
dementia, and blacks are more likely than whites to develop
these complications in connection with high blood pressure. Non
and her colleagues examined data from nearly 3,700 American
adults and found that four years of additional education would
lead to a predicted decrease of 2 mmHg systolic (top number)
blood pressure, a decrease that could lead to a large reduction
in hypertension-related deaths in the United