ASIAN people who come to live in Scotland inherit the same poor heart health suffered by those born here, research revealed yesterday.
A study by Edinburgh University and NHS National Services Scotland suggested people of Indian, Pakistani and Chinese origin were adopting the same bad lifestyle habits, such as poor diet, as Scots when they came to live here.
But the same was not
true of English people living in Scotland: they had a 20 per cent lower chance of dying from heart disease that those born here.
The researchers said more needed to be done to explain the differences.
Dr Colin Fischbacher, a public health medicine consultant, and his colleagues studied the death certificates of Scottish residents aged over 25 who died between 1997 and 2003. The results, published in the Scottish Medical Journal, showed English men living in Scotland had a 25 per cent lower death rate than Scottish-born residents, and a 22 per cent lower death rate from heart disease. Among women, heart deaths were 20 per cent lower.
But the same was not true of Asians in Scotland. Dr Fischbacher said people from India and China typically had a low risk of developing heart disease or stroke. "But we can speculate that by adopting a Scottish lifestyle, taking less exercise and eating less healthily, they may be putting themselves at greater risk of these conditions," he said.
Men born in Pakistan but living in Scotland had a 1 per cent higher rate of heart disease deaths than Scottish-born men and 30 per cent higher than men living in England. Dr Fischbacher said such ethnic groups tended to have higher rates of diabetes and were prone to abdominal obesity, factors that could make the risk of heart disease greater when they adopt unhealthy lifestyles.
Dr Mike Knapton, from the British Heart Foundation, said the research "underlines the need to better untangle the relationship between our genes, our biology and our environment".
He went on: "Research to provide answers to these questions will help us to tackle the preventable health inequalities of geography and ethnicity."
EUROPE'S HEART ATTACK HOTSPOT
SCOTLAND has been labelled the UK's "heart attack hotspot", with someone falling victim every 15 minutes.
More than one in ten people are estimated to be living with some form of heart or circulation problem north of the Border, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
In 2005, there were more than 10,000 deaths from coronary heart disease and almost 6,000 deaths from stroke in Scotland.
Deaths from heart disease vary dramatically in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK.
In south-east England, BHF figures suggest there are 34.25 heart disease deaths per 100,000 men under 65. But in Scotland, the rate rises to almost 57 deaths per 100,000, and in Inverclyde it was 94.34. But there are signs of some improvements being made in the statistics.
Figures in October showed the number of deaths from heart disease among under-75s dropped from 6,908 in 1995 to 3,589 last year.
The figures also revealed that the death rate from heart disease among under-75s dropped by 8.4 per cent in just one year.
The full article contains 544 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
