Black MS patients dying younger than white ones, study finds

Black people with multiple sclerosis (MS) die from the disease at a younger age than white people, a new study reports.

The death rate among Black patients with MS peaks between ages 65 and 74, while white patients are most likely to die between 75 and 84, researchers report in the September issue of the journal Neurology Open Access.

“The reasons behind these health disparities are unclear, but they could be related to differing disease progression, access to health care, lifestyle and other factors such as co-occurring conditions,” Dr. Lilyana Amezcua said in a news release. She’s a professor of neurology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Overall, death rates among people with MS increased between 2012 and 2023, researchers found.

“We would expect that advances in treatments for MS might flatten these trends over time, but we continue to see increasing death rates,” Amezcua said. “That tells us we still have work to do, particularly when it comes to managing other health conditions that affect people with MS.”

In particular, high blood pressure has been driving more MS-related deaths in recent years, researchers found.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data on more than 42,000 U.S. deaths collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Results showed that the overall death rate for people with MS was 1.1 per 100,000 people, with a rate of 1.3 for women and 0.8 for men.

When looking at death rates based on ethnicity:

• Black patients had rates of nearly 1.6 for women and nearly 1 for men.
• White people had rates of about 1.5 for women and 0.9 for men.
• Hispanic patients had rates of nearly 0.4 for women and 0.3 for men.

High blood pressure increasingly played a role in MS deaths from 2019 to 2023, particularly among Black people and white people, researchers found.

“These results highlight the urgent need to develop targeted interventions to better control high blood pressure, including earlier screening, improved access to primary care and approaches to reduce the effects of cardiovascular complications, especially among groups at elevated risk,” Amezcua said.

Beyond that, the study shows how other health problems are linked to worse long-term outcomes among people with MS, researchers said.

“Many of these conditions are preventable or treatable,” Amezcua said. “Instead of focusing solely on MS, it’s important to provide comprehensive care that takes a person’s overall health into account.”

These health problems might also contribute to delays in MS diagnosis, Amezcua said. For example, brain damage caused by a heart condition might resemble MS on scans, making it harder to distinguish between the two.

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Sadie Harley

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Andrew Zinin

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