Hypertension -- racial differences don't affect prescriptions

If you suffer from high blood pressure you're certainly not alone. The incidents of high blood pressure, or hypertension, are on the increase. To combat this problem, doctors can prescribe several types of medication which lower blood pressure by different mechanisms.

It has long been thought that black people and white people responded differently to these different drugs so doctors were advised to consider a patients race while deciding which medication to prescribe. But research, published in the medical journal Hypertension, has showed this approach is flawed. Researchers found the variation between so called races is much less than within each racial group.

So the new recommendation is that race should not be a factor in deciding which medication to prescribe. So the differences between racial groups are not that significant at all, which is what we'd expect, given the Bible's history and teaching.