Asthma takes a hard toll on African-Americans. Can precision medicine ease the burden?
Geneticist Dr. Esteban Burchard was studying asthma at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston years ago when, he recalled, “a black teenager died of an asthma attack right outside the hospital entrance. Which is ridiculous. There are 20 hospitals in Boston!”
The death reflected a harsh reality in the United States: Asthma hits African-Americans particularly hard, and the health care system often fails them. An estimated 15.3 percent of black children have the disease compared with 7.1 percent of white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, African-Americans are nearly three times as likely to die from asthma as white people.
Last year, Burchard, now a professor at with one surprising explanation for those disparities. A set of genetic mutations found mostly in people of African ancestry may make them less likely to respond to albuterol, the most-prescribed asthma drug in the world.
