In the case of chronic obstructive lung disease, African Americans had a worse prognosis (COPD). Examining race-specific ways to assess lung function contributes to racial disparities by failing to recognize pathological decrements as normal. The researchers tested whether race-specific versus universal lung function prediction equations better modeled the relationship between forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), and other COPD outcomes, such as the COPD Assessment Test (CAT), St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), CT percent emphysema, airway wall thickness (Pi10), and six-minute walk test, in a cohort with and at-risk for COPD (6MWT).
They used multiple linear regression to link these outcomes to changes in FEV1 and assessed predictive performance between fitted models using root mean squared error and Alpaydin’s paired F test. According to race-specific equations, African Americans had superior lung function than Non-Hispanic Whites ([FEV1] 76.2% vs. 71.3% predicted, P=0.02). The calculation of African Americans has lower lung function using widely used equations. FEV1 was 61.4% against 71.3% when NHW-H (P<0.001). FEV1 was 69.4% using GLI-O versus 77.4 % (P<0.001). When comparing FEV1% predicted with CAT (P<0.01), SGRQ (P<0.01), and Pi10 (P<0.01), prediction errors from linear regression were lower for universally applied equations than race-specific equations. In comparison, African Americans faced more hardship (P<0.001), in Non-Hispanic White participants, reduced adversity was solely related to better FEV1 (P-for-interaction=0.041).
Reference:www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.202105-1246OC
