Compared with African Americans living in other regions of the United States, those in the south have a higher risk of death from stroke - compounding their overall increased risk of stroke death compared with other ethnic groups.

Dr. George Howard of the University of Alabama at Birmingham presented his findings Wednesday at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2005 that is underway here.

Howard and his colleagues at Birmingham and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta collected information on stroke deaths from state databases from 1997 through 2001.

They found the greatest differences in death according to race occurred in those 45 to 64 years old. Differences diminished with age until 85 years, when there was no racial difference.

The researchers found that southern white men between 55 and 64 had a 29-percent higher risk of death from stroke than white men in northern states. Southern black men had a 59-percent higher risk of stroke death than northern black men - nearly twice that of white men.

Black men between 55 and 64 in New York were 2.1 times more likely to die from stroke than white men in the same age bracket. Black men in South Carolina were 3.8-times more likely to die than white men living there.

“When it comes to your stroke risk, you get a penalty for being an African American, you get a penalty for living in the South and you get an extra penalty for being an African American living in the South,” Howard commented in an American Stroke Association release.

Increased risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and lower socioeconomic status among blacks “explains about 30 to 40 percent of this difference. That leaves about 70-percent of the (racial and geographic differences) unexplained,” Howard told Reuters Health.

“Unless we understand the reason for the difference, designing an intervention would be just shooting in the dark…There is more than just an additive effect of being southern and being an African American. Something else is going on,” he added.