Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 17 February 2000 — Page 6

The Muncie Times, Febuary 17 2000, page 6

NEWS BRIEFS

of 1999, while the second half of the year saw a significant drop. Officials blamed the increase on the fact that plain-clothes officers were pulled off the streets after the killing of Guinean student Amadou Diallo in early 1999 by members of the city’s undercover street crime unit. But Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Unit disagreed. He said

blaming the increase in murders on the changeover is scapegoating. Black Ky. vet finds final resting place LOUISA, Ky.—A monument to Louisa’s only black Vietnam War casualty has found a final resting place. The marker honoring Charles Spencer Jones originally was to be used as a supplement to

a larger monument at the Charles Jones was a helicopter Lawrence County courthouse pilot who, in 1957, was the first listing the county’s soldiers killed black person to graduate from or missing in action. Louisa High School. Jones was in After months in the back of his second tour of duty in Vietnam, Lawrence Judge Executive Dave on Feb. 14, 1969, when he died Compton’s Jeep Cherokee, and from a heart attack or aneurysm stored in his closet, it will be while playing basketball with other placed on Jones’s grave at soldiers. Greenlawn Cemetery this summer, His name is among those on war said Fred Jones, the soldier’s memorials in Washington, D. C., brother. and Frankfort, Ky.

FOR YOUR HEALTH

Southerners face greater risk of high blood pressure

Dallas—High blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke, is more prevalent among Southerners than their non-Southern counterparts of the same age and gender, according to a new study in this month’s Stoke: Journal of the American Heart Association. Researchers examined data on 6,278 Caucasians and African Americans who took part in the Third National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES III) from 1988 to 1994. The new study found that even after controlling for factors such as age and gender, Southerners were more likely to have high blood pressure readings than nonSoutherners. A reading of 140/90 millimeters of mercury (mm/Hg) or higher was considered high blood pressure. Prevalence of high blood pressure was higher among 60- to 79-year-old Southern residents compared with non-Southern residents of the United States (59 percent vs. 54 percent). A higher percentage of older Southern white

men (60 to 79 years) had high blood pressure compared with similar ethnic gender groups in the non-Southern region. States included in the authors’ definition of the South were: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Washington, D. C., was also included. Many of these same states comprise the “stroke belt”— a region of the United States that has a greater proportion of strokes. “Lack of access to health care, lower socioeconomic status, environmental factors and even dietary differences, such as highersodium and lower-potassium diets, may contribute to the geographic variation,” said the study’s lead author Thomas O. Obisesan, M. D., M. P. H., assistant professor of medicine at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D. C. “There are a number of possibilities.” Compared with their non-white

Southern counterparts, older African American men in the South demonstrated higher awareness (78.3 percent vs.67.3 percent) and treatment of high blood pressure (65.7 percent vs. 53.1 percent) but had a lower rate of blood pressure control with medication (34.5 percent vs. 45.4 percent). “We found that even though awareness of high blood pressure had increased, we’re still not controlling it as well as we should,” say Obisesan. “Patients have not been compliant in taking their medication and perhaps physicians have not been aggressive enough in treating high blood pressure.” Further examining the data, researchers also found differences in high blood pressure rates along urban/rural lines. By studying data on African American men, the researchers found that 70.4 percent of African American men living in non-metro areas in the South had high blood pressure, compared to 54.3 percent of African American men living in Southern metropolitan areas.

“Several interventions targeting lifestyle risk factors for high blood pressure currently exist,” said Obisesan. “However, for these interventions have optimal benefit, it is important to target high-risk populations.” High blood pressure is one of several risk factors for stroke that can be improved through treatment or behavior change. Others include smoking, obesity, physical inactivity and diabetes. Risk factors cannot be changed include race, sex and age. “Once physicians recognize the patient has high blood pressure, there needs to be follow-up with aggressive treatment and a strong patient effort to follow doctor’s orders,” Obisesan said. “What we’re seeing is much different—a lack of aggressiveness and a lack of compliance leading to more instances of uncontrolled high blood pressure, which can lead to more strokes.” Co-authors are Clemencia M. Vargas, D. D. S., M. P. H., Ph. D., and Richard F. Gillum, M. D.

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