Atlanta, June 20 (RHC)-- Puerto Rican adults are much more likely to report poorer health than other groups of Latino individuals, according to a new report released by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

The survey, which compared the health conditions of Latino subgroups, found that Puerto Rican adults "consistently reported poorer health status than both their Hispanic and non-Hispanic counterparts.”

Puerto Rican (19.2 percent) and Mexican (17.4 percent) adults were more likely than Central or South American (12.3 percent) and Cuban (14.7 percent) adults to be in fair or poor health, the CDC report noted.

The reasons for the difference are not clear, but Martha Daviglus, MD, PhD, an expert in health disparities at the University of Illinois who was not involved in the study, told website MedPage Today that the difference could be attributable to "early exposure to unhealthy dietary and other lifestyle habits, since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.”