Category: The Gourd

In our first issue, we discussed the current reevaluation of race adjustments to glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Such racial adjustments are not unique to nephrology and today we are including references discussing pulmonary function tests. The original article appears in Chest but there is a nice summary in Medscape. The authors of the Chest article describe the origins of the current adjustment and point out the observed differences between white and black patients was not fully researched and was, instead, attributed to innate racial differences. The authors suggest an alternative but also warn that an abrupt change could also have detrimental effects on patients. Links to the Medscape summary and the Chest article are included below.

A study published presented to the American Society of Hematology and published in Cancer Discovery described an increasing survival gap between white and black patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The authors controlled for multiple variables and still found a survival difference, suggesting genetic differences a play. Genetic analysis did, in fact, uncover differences in genetic markers. Socioeconomic factors also continued to contribute to the observed gap. The authors conclude that both factors need urgent attention.