{"id":4478,"date":"2019-05-22T10:20:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T14:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nchstats.com\/?p=4478"},"modified":"2019-05-22T10:20:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T14:20:38","slug":"4478","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2019\/05\/22\/4478\/","title":{"rendered":"Trends in Cancer and Heart Disease Death Rates Among Adults Aged 45\u201364: United States, 1999\u20132017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Questions for Sally Curtin, M.A., Statistician, and Lead Author of \u201cTrends in Cancer and Heart Disease Death Rates Among Adults Aged 45\u201364: United States, 1999\u20132017<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 Why are death rates from cancer dropping steadily over time and why are death rates from heart disease starting to rise?<\/p>\n

SC<\/em><\/strong>: The death rates are a reflection of a few things\u2014the prevalence of a disease, how often is occurs in the population, as well as its treatment and survival.\u00a0 As this is purely a statistical analysis, others can speak to the trends in these factors.<\/p>\n

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Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 You write that cancer treatments might contribute to subsequent heart disease for patients and might help explain the increase in heart disease mortality.\u00a0 Which cancer treatments are contributing to this subsequent heart disease among cancer patients?<\/p>\n

SC<\/em><\/strong>: The cardiotoxicity of cancer treatments is just one way that these two seemingly disparate diseases are related.\u00a0 It is well known in the medical community that radiation and many chemotherapies can increase the risk of subsequent heart disease. In our analysis, we didn\u2019t examine which treatments might be contributing to heart disease risk.<\/p>\n

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Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 Which groups are seeing the biggest decline in cancer death rates?<\/p>\n

SC<\/em><\/strong>: Non-hispanic black men, who have the highest cancer death rates, also had the largest percentage decline over the period at 34%.\u00a0 In general, the percentage declines were greater for men than for women.<\/p>\n

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Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 Which groups are seeing the biggest increase in heart disease death rates?<\/p>\n

SC<\/em><\/strong>: Non-hispanic white women had a 12% increase since 2009 in heart disease death rates, the greatest of all groups.\u00a0 In total, middle-aged women had a 7% recent increase compared with 3% for middle-aged men.\u00a0 Another interesting finding is that Hispanic women, who had the lowest heart disease death rates of all groups, had a 37% decline over the period, the only group to experience a decline over the entire period.<\/p>\n

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Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 Does this analysis suggest that cancer will not overtake heart disease as the leading cause of death in the U.S., which many have been predicting?<\/p>\n

SC<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 The focus of this report was on the middle-age population, and Cancer is the leading cause of death in the 45-64 year old population as shown in this report, whereas heart disease remains the leading cause in the total population.\u00a0 While we do not make predictions about what data trends will look like in the future, it is safe to say that if the recent upturn in heart disease continues, it is unlikely that this switch will occur anytime soon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Questions for Sally Curtin, M.A., Statistician, and Lead Author of \u201cTrends in Cancer and Heart Disease Death Rates Among Adults Aged 45\u201364: United States, 1999\u20132017.\u201d Q:\u00a0 Why are death rates from cancer dropping steadily over time and why are death rates from heart disease starting to rise? SC: The death rates are a reflection of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10559,49481,28877,47317,53751],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}