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U.S. Life Spans Rebound from Pandemic Lows, Helped by Drop in Fatal Overdoses

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Dec 19, 2024.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 19, 2024 -- After years of decline, U.S. life expectancy is finally on the rise again for the first time since 2019, new government research shows.

This turnaround was driven in part by a decline in drug overdose deaths, which had risen dramatically as a result of the opioid epidemic, according to a second report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That includes the first reduction in OD deaths caused by powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl and tramadol, researchers said.

“The age-adjusted rate for drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone decreased from 2022 to 2023, the first such decrease since the large increases that began in 2013,” concluded the research team led by Matthew Garnett, an injury epidemiologist and statistician with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

“The rate also decreased for deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids and heroin between 2022 and 2023,” the team added.

Life expectancy at birth in 2023 was 78.4 years for the total population, an increase of 0.9 years from 77.5 in 2022, CDC researchers reported.

For men, life expectancy increased 1 year, from 74.8 in 2022 to 75.8 in 2023.

Meanwhile, women saw a 0.9-year increase, from 80.2 in 2022 to 81.1 in 2023.

“From 2022 to 2023, age-adjusted death rates decreased for 9 of the 10 leading causes of death,” wrote the life expectancy research team led by Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist with the NCHS.

Deaths due to heart disease, accidental injury, stroke, respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease and COVID-19 all fell significantly between 2022 and 2023, researchers found.

The rate of cancer deaths also went down, but not significantly, the report says.

The end of the pandemic likely contributed to the increase in life expectancy, researchers said.

“The most notable change was for COVID-19, which dropped from the 4th leading cause in 2022 to the 10th leading cause in 2023,” the researchers wrote.

Overall, COVID deaths decreased more than 73% between 2022 and 2023, falling from 44.5 deaths to 11.9 deaths per 100,000, researchers said.

A decrease in drug OD deaths also contributed to improved life expectancy.

The rate of drug overdose deaths fell from 32.6 per 100,000 in 2022 to 31.3 per 100,000 in 2023, researchers said. Drug OD deaths are considered accidental injury deaths.

These results jibe with statistics released last week by the CDC, which reported that drug OD deaths had decreased 17% between July 2023 and July 2024.

However, the OD death rate is still 3.5 times what it was in 2003, when 8.9 people for every 100,000 died by drug overdose.

Drug OD deaths related to synthetic opioids declined by 2.2% between 2022 and 2023, results show -- the first significant decline in OD deaths related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl since 2003, researchers added.

Drug overdose deaths related to natural opioids like morphine, oxycodone and hydrocodone also declined 17.1%, between 2022 and 2023, and OD deaths caused by heroin decreased 33.3%.

However, OD death rates for cocaine increased by 4.9% between 2022 and 2023, and OD deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine increased by 1.9%, researchers said.

Lastly, infants did not seem to benefit from the declining death rates, researchers found.

“The infant mortality rate of 560.2 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023 was not significantly different from the rate in 2022,” the researchers wrote.

The ten leading causes of infant death in 2023 -- birth defects, low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, unintentional injuries, maternal complications, bacterial sepsis of newborn, cord and placental complications, respiratory distress of newborn, intrauterine hypoxia and birth asphyxia, and diseases of the circulatory system -- accounted for more than 65% of all infant deaths, researchers concluded.

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

Posted December 2024

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