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South has worst rate of heart disease

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 16, 2007

ATLANTA - West Virginia and Kentucky, states known for high levels of obesity, diabetes and smoking, have the highest proportion of people with heart disease in the nation, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

The findings, from the first study to look at heart disease prevalence state by state, showed states in the Southeast and Southwest were heart disease leaders. Colorado and the District of Columbia had the lowest percentages.

The results line up with previous, state-specific reports about heart disease death rates, obesity and other risk factors, said Wayne Rosamond, a professor at the University of North Carolina who chairs a statistics committee for the American Heart Association.

He called the report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention very important: "It confirms what we know about regional differences in the burden of disease."

For the nation as a whole, about 4 percent of those surveyed had suffered a heart attack. A slightly higher percentage reported angina or coronary heart disease, and 6.5 percent reported any of those conditions.

But in West Virginia, more than 10 percent had at least one of the conditions. The prevalence in Kentucky was nearly 9 percent, and Mississippi was No. 3, with 8 percent.

Florida was also among the states with the worst ratings, with 7.4 percent of those surveyed having at least one of the conditions.

CDC researchers drew their data from a 2005 telephone survey of 356,112 U.S. adults in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

[Last modified February 16, 2007, 00:24:28]