…asthma. Studies show that African American adults with COPD, asthma, or coexisting asthma and COPD use fewer medical services and account for lower medical costs than Caucasians because of non-diagnosis.
4. Hepatitis C. It’s the leading cause of liver transplants and the most common cause of liver-related deaths in this country, but as many as 70 percent of those infected are unaware they carry the virus. African-Americans face a “triple whammy” when it comes to the hepatitis C virus. Two aspects of this triple threat are well known: the high prevalence of the virus in the African-American community and the lower response to therapy of infected individuals. But there’s a third threat: African-Americans don’t spontaneously clear the virus as often as other racial and ethnic groups.
5. Hypothyroidism. About half of the nearly 27 million people with an underactive thyroid are undiagnosed. Symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, hair loss and poor memory are often dismissed as normal signs of aging. According to new research, African Americans are diagnosed with thyroid cancer at a significantly lower rate than white Americans. According to the study authors, more aggressive detection efforts in African Americans could uncover more incidence of thyroid cancer, to the extent that the African American and white populations may be experiencing similar rates of increase.