Study: African-American Hearts Work Differently

This bit of news is sure to stir up the ongoing controversy over the connections between ethnicity and health: a new study says the hearts of African-Americans beat more weakly than those of other people.

The discovery could help to explain why black Americans experience heart failure at higher rates than other groups of Americans, and could lead to new treatments, the study authors said.

The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said muscle contraction in three main regions of the heart was 1 percent to 3 percent weaker in seemingly healthy blacks than in other groups of people.

Who's hearts beat the best? Chinese-Americans, perhaps: their hearts "had a small but consistently stronger squeezing action