Atherosclerosis in Europieans and Bantu

GARROD 1 was one of the earliest workers to emphasize that human beings differ in the details of their biochemistry and that these differences are in part genetically de-termined. At present there is abundant evi-dence showing that groups differ in regard to the biochemical characteristics of their mem-bers.2 The concensus is that atherosclerosis of the aorta and coronary arteries, together with the associated complications, is less severe in South African Bantu than in white people, while the incidence of cerebrovascular acci-dents in the Bantu is at least as high if not higher.3-11 In the studies cited the coronary or cerebral arteries were often not included. Likewise, very few of the reports contained studies on infants. The present paper concerns the observa-tions obtained by gross estimation of the ex-tent and severity of atherosclerotic lesions in the aorta and the coronary and cerebral ar-teries of white and Bantu subjects. Material and Methods The vessels analyzed in the present study were obtained from the bodies of in-patients who died in the Pretoria General Hospital, which contains 913 beds for white and 665 for non-white pa-tients. Postmortem examinations are conducted in this hospital on approximately 17 per cent of the deceased patients. The main reason for this low percentage is failure to obtain permission from relatives. All the patients included in the study had died from natural causes, and the series was entirely unselected except for the exclusion of syphilitic and tuberculous cases. The present sample con