Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke Risk Score to predict stroke

The geographical variation in excess stroke mortality in the southeastern states of the United States (stroke-belt states) was described first nearly half a century ago.1 The excess mor-tality in these states remains unexplained, although the original, risk-factor hypothesis implicated differences in age, sex, preva-lence of high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, smoking, high cholesterol, history of heart disease, and the low use of antihy-pertensive medications. However, data from a national commu-nity-based cohort study, Reasons for Geographical and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS), that used the Framingha