Each year, approximately 350,000 persons are diagnosed with breast, cervical, or colorectal cancer in the United States, and nearly 100,000 die from these diseases. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening tests for each of these cancers to reduce morbidity and mortality.
This report presents preliminary U.S. data on deaths, death rates, life expectancy, leading causes of death, and infant mortality for 2010 by selected characteristics such as age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin.
Binge drinking accounts for more than half of the estimated 80,000 average annual deaths and three quarters of $223.5 billion in economic costs resulting from excessive alcohol consumption in the United States.
From 1999 to 2008, the suicide death rate for persons aged 45–64 years increased overall (from 13.2 to 17.6 per 100,000 population) and for white men (from 22.6 to 30.7) and white women (from 6.7 to 9.4), whereas the rate did not change significantly for black men and women.
The 10 leading causes of death in the United States were the same in 2008 and 2009. The rankings also remained the same. The preliminary age-adjusted death rate for the leading cause of death, diseases of heart, decreased by 3.6%. The age-adjusted death rate for malignant neoplasms decreased by 1.0%. Deaths from these two diseases combined accounted for 48% of deaths in the United States in 2009.
Quitting smoking is beneficial to health at any age, and cigarette smokers who quit before age 35 years have mortality rates similar to those who never smoked. From 1965 to 2010, the prevalence of cigarette smoking among adults in the United States decreased from 42.4% to 19.3%, in part because of an increase in the number who quit smoking. Since 2002, the number of former U.S. smokers has exceeded the number of current smokers.
Age-adjusted mortality rates for coronary heart disease (CHD) have declined steadily in the United States since the 1960s. Multiple factors likely have contributed to this decline in CHD deaths, including greater control of risk factors, resulting in declining incidence of CHD, and improved treatment.
In the past 2 years, CDC has learned of several clusters of respiratory illness associated with human enterovirus 68 (HEV68), including severe disease.
In 2009, Hispanic adults (16.2%) were less likely to have been told by a doctor or other health-care professional that they had some form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, lupus, or fibromyalgia compared with non-Hispanic white adults (23.6%) and non-Hispanic black adults (23.2%). Puerto Rican adults (27.4%) were more likely to have arthritis or a related condition than were other Hispanic subgroups.
