WASHINGTON — Gains in the American life span have slowed in recent years, according to a new report, with death rates flattening for the first time since researchers started measuring them in the late 1960s.
WASHINGTON — Gains in the American life span have slowed in recent years, according to a new report, with death rates flattening for the first time since researchers started measuring them in the late 1960s.
Researchers from the American Cancer Society used federal mortality data to analyze trends in longevity from 1969 to 2013. Death rates in the United States have been declining for decades, an effect of improvements in health care, disease management and medical technology — and the researchers had expected to find more of the same.
Instead, they stumbled upon a disturbing shift. The declines in death rates flattened in the most recent period, from 2010 to 2013, dropping by an average of just 0.4 percent annually, a rate so slight that it was not statistically significant.
Researchers did not attempt to find the reason for the slowdown, saying their analysis was limited to identifying the broader trends, not explaining them. But researchers who did not participate in the study said the obesity epidemic, which has plagued Americans of all ages since the 1980s, was probably a factor.
Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, head of surveillance and health services research at the American Cancer Society and one of the report’s authors, cautioned that the slowdown had taken place over just four years, a very short period for the purposes of long-term mortality trends. He said that it was too early to tell whether the finding marked the start of a trend. Even so, it was the first departure from years of declines, and it caught researchers off guard.
S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the study was the first indication of what could be the early stages of obesity’s toll on American life spans.
“The medical community seems to be under a fog that we can constantly and forever reduce death rates, and that’s simply not true,” said Olshansky.
Still, the past few years could not erase gains since the study began in 1969. Death rates overall dropped by about 43 percent, and mortality rates for various ailments also fell, by 77 percent for stroke, by 68 percent for heart disease, by 18 percent for cancer, and by 17 percent for diabetes.
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