Study: Southern Blacks Die at Higher Rate
Wed Feb 2, 5:08 PM ET
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
NEW ORLEANS - Blacks in the South apparently get a double whammy of stroke risk: They die at much higher rates than either Southern whites or blacks who live elsewhere.
Researchers have long known that stroke deaths are greater among blacks and people in the "Stroke Belt" across the eastern part of the nation's midsection. But they thought the combined risk posed by race and geography was small.
"Much to our surprise, the finding is: No, it's not," said George Howard, a biostatistician who presented his research Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference in New Orleans.
The rate of stroke deaths among black men in the South was 51 percent higher than it was among blacks in other parts of the country. And black men in the South had roughly four times the risk of dying of a stroke as white men living outside the South.
"That's a pretty big difference," Howard said.
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