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The relative effectiveness of antihypertensive drugs in Caucasians and Negroes
Author(s) -
Howard Jan,
Tiedeman Gary
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1002/cpt196784502
Subject(s) - race (biology) , medicine , logistic regression , differential effects , exact test , racial differences , demography , logit , ethnic group , statistics , mathematics , biology , botany , sociology , anthropology
A secondary analysis of 133 clinical trials of antihypertensive drugs was conducted for the purpose of assessing the relationship between race and drug effectiveness. The race categories were whites and nonwhites (all or almost all of whom were Negroes). Effectiveness and ineffectiveness were generally defined in terms of reduced blood pressure. Two different methods of analyzing the data were used: the Fisher Exact Test approach and the logit approach. The analyses showed a consistent tendency for the whites to be more responsive to antihypertensive therapy than were the nonwhites. The race difference in average successrates was fairly small and not consistently significant at the 0.05 level, but the trend in favor of whites merits reporting. Three possible explanations for the race difference are suggested: a differential cooperation hypothesis, a differential severity of illness hypothesis, and a genetic hypothesis.