Alzheimer’s Disease Now Believed to be Third Major Cause of Death in United States

Heart disease and cancer are the top two leading causes of death in the United States. Yet now there may be another one that ranks in the top 10. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released reports on the leading causes for death and found that Alzheimer's killed 84,000 people in 2011, ranking it sixth.

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia in older adults, particularly 65 and older. About five percent of men and women aged 65-74 have Alzheimer's and nearly half of senior citizens aged 85 and older have it, according to the CDC. Five million people are currently suffering from the disease, but the numbers could be in greater quantity.

According to researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Alzheimer's might actually be the third leading cause of death in the United States. Bryan James, a professor at the university, says that many do not acknowledge Alzheimer's as a fatal disease even though it is. This is one reason he believes the numbers aren't as accurate as they should be--especially when it comes to a person's death certificate.

"It is up to the discretion of the person filling out the death certificate to list Alzheimer's as an underlying cause," said James in this Live Science article. "Death certificates have a place to name the immediate cause of death, and then usually have room to list up to three other underlying causes of death."

James and his researchers believe that for some of these deaths, other underlying causes are listed before Alzheimer's because some don't regard it as a fatal disease or perhaps the person was never officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Their study comprised of a group of 2,566 people 65 and older who had developed Alzheimer's. They found that after eight years, 1,090 people died and more than a third of the deaths were a result of Alzheimer's.

This is obviously a small sample size, but these findings indicated that 500,000 people could have possibly died with the disease in 2010, which dwarfs the 84,000 recorded by the CDC in 2011. These numbers would rank Alzheimer's as the third leading cause of death, right behind heart disease and cancer.

To read more about Alzheimer's and James' study, visit the Alzheimer's Association website, the CDC website, and this Live Science article.