Does elevated blood pressure (prehypertension and hypertension) increase the risk of developing diabetes in African Americans and Whites?
Hypertension is an independent risk factor for incident diabetes in whites, whereas in African Americans, the association appears mediated by metabolic factors like BMI and lipids, though African Americans carry a higher baseline risk overall.
In African Americans, higher diabetes incidence among hypertensive individuals may be explained by BMI, fasting glucose, triglyceride, and HDL cholesterol. In whites, prehypertension and hypertension are associated with greater risk of diabetes, beyond that explained by other risk factors. African Americans, regardless of blood pressure, have greater risks of developing diabetes than whites.
Wei et al. (Thu,) studied this question.