Ethnic differences in cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in Birmingham, England: The Birmingham Factory Screening Project

OBJECTIVES: To compare cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, among white Europeans, African-Caribbeans and South-Asians, in relation to baseline demographic characteristics and blood pressure variables. DESIGN: Observational follow-up study. SETTING: Community settings in Birmingham, UK. PARTICIPANTS: Two thousand and eighty-nine white European and 340 African-Caribbean men and women, and 195 South-Asian men whose survival status on 31 December 2003 was known. INTERVENTIONS: Follow-up for assessment of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality over a mean (SD) 20.3 (4.2) years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: All-cause and cardiovascular mortality. RESULTS: There were no significant ethnic differences in all-cause or cardiovascular mortality for men [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 1.02; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.80-1.28 and HR = 1.33; 95% CI, 0.99-1.79, respectively] or women (adjusted HR = 0.61; 95% CI, 0.29-1.32 and HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 0.41-3.45, respectively) in either univariate or multivariate analyses. The only independent predictors of both all-cause and cardiovascular mortality were age, sex, smoking and mean systolic blood pressure or hypertension. CONCLUSIONS: It appears that ethnicity per se is not an independent risk factor for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality between white Europeans and African-Caribbeans in the present study. The data concerning ethnic differences in all-cause and cardiovascular mortality for South-Asians is limited, given that significantly fewer South-Asian men could be traced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), hence we do not know their survival status, and the total lack of data on South-Asian women.