Arthritis Severity Varies By Race
POSTED: 5:22 pm EDT September 24, 2004
A few years ago, Edith Smith's joints started hurting. She figured it was probably arthritis, and she was right. What she didn't know was that it is the worst form of the disease -- rheumatoid arthritis, which quickly incapacitated her.
"I couldn't turn the doorknob; I couldn't turn on the faucet," Smith said. "Lifting my hands to do my hair was a problem."
Similarly, Carolyn Omphroy had rheumatoid arthritis that caused her joints to swell and become very painful.
"I just felt that I couldn't walk, and my knee was so swollen and painful that I couldn't manage," Omphroy said.
Nowadays, there's a wide range of new medications that have dramatically changed the quality of life and long-term outlook for arthritis patients.
There is, however, a problem when it comes to patients like Smith and Omphroy. It seems that when arthritis drugs are tested, more than 90 percent of the test subjects are Caucasian -- which means doctors know how the drugs work in whites. But just as in diabetes and hypertension, there are racial and ethnic differences in drug response and even the disease itself.
"Between Caucasian, African-American and Hispanic patients that we see, there are differences in disease presentation where their functional levels, their pain levels, their swollen joints, the numbers and the areas involved are different from one another," said Dr. Yusef Yazici, of Long Island College Hospital.
Yazici has been studying those differences, and has found that Hispanics tend to have more pain when they're first diagnosed. He said blacks usually have more physical disability, which translates into differences in drug response.
"Hispanic patients respond a little quicker to the current therapies that we have because they are very good at controlling pain initially," Yazici said.
TV interview with Dr. Yazici is published at NBC's website |
