QuickStats: Age-Adjusted Death Rates* --- United States, 2008

April 15, 2011 / 60(14);447

* Per 100,000 U.S. standard population.

† Data for 2008 are preliminary.

In 2008, the overall age-adjusted death rate in the United States was 758.7 per 100,000 population. Among states, the rate ranged from 589.0 deaths per 100,000 population in Hawaii to 958.5 in West Virginia. In general, death rates were higher among states in the South and lower among states in the Northeast and West census regions.

Source: Miniño AM, Xu JQ, Kochanek KD. Deaths: preliminary data for 2008. Natl Vital Stat Rep 2010;59(2).

Social Security Improvements And Longer Life Span Linked By Study

New findings from researchers at New York Medical College suggest that when Social Security benefits are improved, people over the age of 65 benefit most, and may even live longer.

According to a new study published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, Americans over the age of 65 experienced steep declines in the rate of mortality in the periods that followed the founding of and subsequent improvements to Social Security. The authors urge that as Congress and the President discuss changes to Social Security they consider the benefit of reduced mortality and improved health among older Americans.

"The political discourse around Social Security focuses exclusively on the system's long-range financial problems rather than on the benefits of improved health and reduced poverty," said Peter Arno, Ph.D., the study's lead author and professor and director of the doctoral program in the Department of Health Policy and Management of the School of Health Sciences and Practice at New York Medical College. "If Social Security is put on the chopping block, lawmakers will jeopardize the most important safety net for America's elderly."

Arno - whose work is funded through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation® Investigator Award in Health Policy Research - and his colleagues analyzed the effect of Social Security on mortality over the course of the 20th century. After controlling for factors such as changes in the economy, access to medical care, and Medicare, they found that although mortality rates for all adults fell during the 20th century, rates of decline for those 65 and older changed more than 50 percent in the decades following the introduction of Social Security in 1940. Rates of decline for the younger age groups remained virtually the same during this period. The trend was particularly pronounced following marked improvements in Social Security benefits between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s.
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Scientists Demonstrate That Environmental Lithium Uptake Promotes Longevity

Professor Dr. Michael Ristow's team along with Japanese colleagues from universities in Oita and Hiroshima have demonstrated by two independent approaches that even a low concentration of lithium leads to an increased life expectancy in humans as well as in a model organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. The research team presents its results in the online edition of the scientific publication European Journal of Nutrition which is now online.

Lithium is one of many nutritional trace elements and is ingested mainly through vegetables and drinking water. "The scientific community doesn't know much about the physiological function of lithium", project manager Ristow says. According to an earlier study from the US, highly concentrated lithium showed to be life-prolonging in C. elegans, the Professor of Nutrition in Jena continues. "The dosage that was analyzed back then, however, is clearly beyond the physiologically relevant range and may be poisonous for human beings", explains Ristow. To find out if lithium has a life-prolonging impact at much lower concentrations, the scientists then examined the impact of lithium in a concentration that is regularly found in ordinary tap water.

In a collaborative effort with Japanese colleagues, the Jena scientists analyzed the mortality rate in 18 adjacent Japanese municipalities in relation to the amount of lithium contained in tap water from the respective regions. "We found that the mortality rate was considerably lower in those municipalities with more lithium in the drinking water", Ristow explains the key finding. In a second experiment, the Jena scientists examined exactly this range of concentration in the model organism C. elegans. The result was confirmed: "The average longevity of the worms is higher after they have been treated with lithium at this dosage", Ristow says.

Even though the underlying mechanisms still needs to be clarified, the scientists assume that the higher longevity they observed in humans as well as in nematodes C. elegans can be induced by the trace element lithium.

Moreover, the scientists speculate about using low-dose lithium as a potential dietary supplement in the future. "From previous studies we know already that a higher uptake of lithium through drinking water is associated with an improvement of psychological well-being and with decreased suicide rates", Professor Ristow explains. While low-dose lithium uptake on the basis of the new data is clearly thought to be beneficial, more studies will be necessary to thoroughly recommend such a supplementation, the scientists conclude.

Original Publication:
Zarse K., Terao T., Tian J., Iwata N., Ishii N., Ristow M. Low-dose lithium uptake promotes longevity in humans and metazoans. Eur J Nutr 2011, DOI: 10.1007/s00394-011-0171-x

Source:
Ute Schoenfelder
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena

Early BP Lowering No Help in Acute Stroke

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Lowering blood pressure early during acute stroke did nothing to improve outcomes and may actually impair patients' ability to live independently later on, researchers affirmed in a randomized trial.

Candesartan (Atacand) started within 30 hours of stroke onset and given over seven days did not affect the combined six-month rate of death from vascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke compared with placebo (11.7% versus 11.3%, adjusted hazard ratio 1.09, P=0.52), Eivind Berge, MD, of Oslo University Hospital Ullevål, and colleagues found.

Functional disability was 17% more common with the drug (P=0.048), the group reported here at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference and simultaneously online in The Lancet.
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QuickStats: Death Rates* for Five Leading Types of Cancer† --- United States, 1999--2007

The figure above shows the death rates for five leading types of cancer in the United States from 1999-2007. Age-adjusted death rates for lung, prostate, breast, and colon cancer declined during 1999-2007. The rate decreased by 9.6% for lung cancer, 23.9% for prostate cancer, 15.2% for breast cancer, and 19.6% for colon cancer. The death rate for pancreatic cancer did not change significantly during this period.
 
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Vital Signs: Breast Cancer Screening Among Women Aged 50--74 Years --- United States, 2008

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Breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer deaths for women in the United States. Screening with treatment has lowered breast cancer mortality.

In recent years, mammography rates have plateaued. Critical gaps in screening remain for certain racial/ethnic groups and lower socioeconomic groups, and for the uninsured.

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Premature Adult Mortality Falls but Gender Gap Widens from MedPage Today

(Editor's note: US specific information is at the end of this post)

By Todd Neale, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Although worldwide adult mortality rates have been dropping overall for the past four decades, the gap between men and women, who have lower mortality risk, has widened, researchers found.

From 1970 to 2010, the probability that a 15-year-old would die before turning 60 dropped by 19% for men and 34% for women, according to Christopher Murray, MD, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues.

During that period, the difference between mortality risk in men and women grew from 63 per 1,000 to 80 per 1,000, the researchers reported online in The Lancet.

"I think the widening gap between males and females is brought about to a large extent by the bigger impact of the Soviet Union collapse -- social dysfunction, high alcohol use -- on males than females," Murray told MedPage Today.

Also contributing is the HIV epidemic's disproportionate effect on males in certain parts of the world, he said.

Murray and his colleagues set out to evaluate worldwide trends in premature adult mortality from 1970 to the present, a topic that has not received as much attention as child health.

They argued, however, that "the prevention of premature adult death is just as important for global health policy as the improvement of child survival," noting that declining child mortality and aging populations lead to a larger proportion of deaths occurring among adults.

The researchers compiled 3,889 measurements of adult mortality for 187 countries using vital registration data, census data, and information on deaths in the household and among siblings.

Using the data, the Murray and his colleagues calculated yearly estimates of the probability of a 15-year-old dying before reaching 60.

Aside from the widening gap between male and female mortality, Murray said one of the most dramatic findings was the growing disparity between the best-off and worst-off countries since 1970.

Mortality probabilities for men ranged from 182 to 413 per 1,000 in 1970 and from 77 to 579 per 1,000 in 2010, an increase in the intercountry spread of 117%. A similar phenomenon was seen among women as well.

The drivers, Murray said, were worsening mortality risks in eastern Europe, central Asia, and many parts of Africa, accompanied by dramatic improvements in other parts of the world.

In southern Africa in particular, the mortality risks in 2010 for men (578 per 1,000) and women (446 per 1,000) exceed those seen in Sweden in the middle of the 18th century (493 per 1,000 for men and 437 per 1,000 for women).

Differing trends in tobacco and alcohol use, the spread of HIV, and the prevalence of key risk factors for noncommunicable disease, such as obesity and physical inactivity, are the main factors contributing to the disparity between nations.

Among high-income countries, in the U.S. the rate of decline in mortality risk was less than 1.5% per year from 1970 to 2010, much slower than in many other developed countries.

In 1990, the U.S. ranked 34th in female mortality and 41st in male mortality. Those ranks dipped further in 2010, to 49th for women and 45th for men, trailing all of Western Europe and several other countries.

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Older Age Boosts Mortality Risk with Cardiac Devices - from MedPage Today

By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Hospital mortality increased significantly in patients 80 or older who received implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) or cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), illustrating a need for better candidacy criteria for this age group, an analysis of a large database suggested.

Compared with patients younger than 80, patients ages 80 to 85 had almost twice the inhospital mortality risk, and that risk tripled in patients older than 85 according to an article in the April 12 Archives of Internal Medicine.

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Life Expectancy in U.S. Hits a New High - Forbes.com

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Deaths also at an all-time low, new government report shows (HealthDay News) -- Life expectancy in the United States has reached almost 78 years, a record high, federal health officials said Wednesday. Not only has life expectancy increased, but the death rate has dropped to an all-time low of 760.3 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More