Black patients with type 2 diabetes experience more heart attacks, strokes, and end-stage kidney disease, compared with whites. Yet, blacks appear to have considerably lower rates of clinical coronary artery disease, compared with whites, according to study reported in Diabetologia (December 2005). The study involved >1100 patients with type 2 diabetes participating in a diabetes heart study.
For the study, the researchers investigated whether there were ethnic differences in the amount of calcified plaque found in the coronary and carotid arteries. The researchers determined that calcified plaque in the arteries was significantly lower in blacks than whites. The black participants, however, had a more negative risk factor profile and dramatically thicker walls of the carotid artery.