Wednesday October 10 4:29 PM ET

U.S. Life Expectancy Reaches New High

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Heart disease and cancer are still the biggest killers, but Americans are surviving longer and more are dying of diseases associated with old age, a government report issued on Wednesday showed.

Life expectancy for Americans has reached a new high of 76.9 years, compared with 76.7 years in 1999, mostly because fewer people are dying early from heart disease and cancer, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) reported.

Death rates from murder, suicide, accidents, stroke, diabetes, chronic lower respiratory diseases, chronic liver disease and AIDS (news - web sites) were also down in 2000, the report said.

More and more Americans are lucky enough to die of old age, said Ari Minino, a demographer at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, who helped write the report.

``What we are seeing is an emergence and increase in illnesses that affect mostly the older population,'' Minino said in a telephone interview.

``It's just because the population in the United States is getting older.''

The report, based on medical files of most of the reported deaths in the United States, finds increases in deaths from Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites), influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, high blood pressure, and septicemia or blood infection.

``These are age-related diseases,'' Minino said. ``There has been an increase in a condition that debuted into our 15 leading causes of death list. It is called pneumonitis,'' he added.

``It afflicts mostly the elderly. It is an injury to the lungs caused sometimes by vomit and sometimes by particles of food or liquid that are aspirated into the lungs.''

The report finds that 2,404,598 people died in the United States in 2000, 13,199 more than the year before. But because there were more Americans living overall, the death rate fell.

Out of every 100,000 Americans living in 2000, 873 died, down from 877 per 100,000 in 1999. The age-adjusted death rate was even lower, at 872.4.

``If we want to compare death rates in, for instance, Florida, with death rates across country, because there are more old people in Florida, the comparison is not fair. Age-adjusted death rate removes that distorting effect ... so that we can make fairer comparisons,'' Minino said.

Another piece of good news in the report -- fewer babies died. ``The preliminary infant mortality rate in the U.S. fell to its lowest level ever in 2000 -- 6.9 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, down from a rate of 7.1 in 1999,'' the CDC said in a statement.

``A healthy pregnancy is a major factor in reducing the risk of infant death,'' CDC director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan said in the statement. ``Timely prenatal care and avoiding harmful behavior like smoking are two examples of how pregnant mothers can protect the health of their infants.''

Men are still more likely to die before women, with the life expectancy for a male born in 2000 now being 74.1 and for a female 79.5 years.

Heart disease and cancer are still the biggest killers of Americans. Heart disease killed more than 700,000 Americans last year and cancer killed more than 550,000.

Among the other top 10 causes of death:

-- Stroke, which killed 166,000

-- Chronic lower respiratory diseases, which killed 123,000

-- Accidents, which killed nearly 94,000

-- Diabetes, which killed nearly 69,000

-- Influenza and pneumonia, which killed 67,000

-- Alzheimer's, which killed more than 49,000

-- Nephritis and other kidney conditions killed 37,000

-- Septicemia killed more than 31,000

-- (good news @ bad. news), October 10, 2001

Answers

The good news is that the estimate for life expectancy was at an all-time high.

The bad news is that it was calculated before Sept. 11. Revised estimates are now closer to the neighborhood of about 35 years old.

-- (good news @ bad. news), October 10, 2001.