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Women’s Health Research: Progress, Pitfalls, and Promise
TABLE B-1 Leading Causes of Female and Male Deaths in the United States in 2006 (estimated number of deaths, estimated percentage of deaths)a
Rank
Females
Males
1
Heart disease
(315,930, 25.8%)
Heart disease
(315,706, 26.3%)
2
Malignant neoplasm (cancer)
(269,819, 22%)
Malignant neoplasm (cancer)
(290,069, 24.1%)
3
Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)
(82,595, 6.7%)
Unintentional injury
(78,941, 6.6%)
4
Chronic lower respiratory disease
(65,323, 5.3%)
Chronic lower respiratory disease
(59,260, 4.9%)
5
Alzheimer’s disease
(51,281, 4.2%)
Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)
(54,524, 4.5%)
6
Unintentional injury
(42,658, 3.5%)
Diabetes mellitus
(36,006, 3%)
7
Diabetes mellitus
(36,443, 3%)
Suicide
(26,308, 2.2%)
8
Influenza and pneumonia
(30,676, 2.5%)
Influenza and pneumonia
(25,650, 2.1%)
9
Nephritis (kidney inflammation)
(23,250, 1.9%)
Nephritis (kidney inflammation)
(22,094, 1.8%)
10
Septicemia (blood poisoning)
(18,712, 1.5%)
Alzheimer disease
(21,151, 1.8%)
Total deaths (all causes)
1,224,322
1,201,942
aData are not age-adjusted.
DATA SOURCE: CDC (2009a).
among the 10 leading causes of death in women 15–54 years old in 2006. Women 35–44 years old, in whom HIV ranked as the fifth-leading cause of death, had the highest proportion of deaths from HIV in that year.
Table B-2 summarizes the leading causes of death from cancer in women by race and ethnicity. Lung cancer and colorectal cancer were estimated to be the leading and third-leading causes of cancer deaths in both women and men in 2008 on the basis of projections from trends in cancer deaths in previous years (ACS, 2008).1 The second-leading cause of cancer deaths in women and men was
1
Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the number of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year on the basis of the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
