Cancer Outpacing Heart Disease as Leading Cause of Death in These Countries …

Cancer has now surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in Sweden, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Poland, and Turkey, according to a report published in The Lancet.

Among adults aged 35 to 70 years, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, but deaths from cancer are now more common in some high- and middle-income countries.

The researchers said that “this epidemiological transition” may be due to improvements made in preventing and treating CVD in high-income countries.

Researchers assessed data from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study and identified 162,534 individuals from five continents who were enrolled in the first two phases of the core study between January 6, 2005, and December 4, 2016.

Cancer outpacing CVD in mortality in high-income countries

During the study, 11,307 (7.0%) participants died: 9,329 (5.7%) had CVD and 5,151 (3.2%) had a cancer. CVD occurred more often in low- (7.1 cases per 1,000 person-years) and in middle-income (6.8 cases per 1,000 person-years) countries than in high-income countries (4.3 cases per 1,000 person-years). However, incident cancer was most common in high-income countries and least common in low-income countries.

“As CVD decreases in many countries, mortality from cancer will probably become the leading cause of death,” the researchers concluded.

The United States was not included in the study.