{"id":52909,"date":"2026-01-21T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=52909"},"modified":"2026-01-21T22:06:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T04:06:06","slug":"study-heart-disease-stroke-remain-leading-causes-of-u-s-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=52909","title":{"rendered":"Study: Heart disease, stroke remain leading causes of U.S. deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Jan. 21 (UPI) &#8212;&nbsp;More people die from heart disease and stroke than from anything else in the United States, despite a five-year decline, a study released Wednesday by the American Heart Association indicates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Heart disease is the single greatest cause of death, while stroke has moved up to the fourth-leading cause of death,<a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.heart.org\/news\/heart-disease-stroke-deaths-down-yet-still-kill-more-in-u-s-than-any-other-cause\">\u2002the association said<\/a>&nbsp;in its 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">While ranking as the most common causes of death in the United States, heart disease and stroke have declined over the past five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;It&#8217;s encouraging to see that total deaths from heart disease and stroke declined,&#8221; said Dr. Stacey E. Rosen, volunteer president of the American Heart Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;The past five years appear to have been an anomaly given the huge impact the pandemic had on all health during that time,&#8221; Rosen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;The fact remains that heart disease and stroke continue to take the lives of too many of our loved ones each and every day,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Together, they still kill more people than the #2 and #3 causes of death.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When combined, more than 25% of deaths in the United States are due to heart disease and stroke, while all types of cancer and accidents rank second and third, respectively, among the nation&#8217;s leading individual causes of death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The updated statistics are based on 2023 data, which show 915,973 deaths from cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, stroke, hypertension and heart failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The number of cardiovascular disease deaths in 2023 is 25,679 fewer than 941,652 such deaths in 2022, which is a 2.73% decline in one year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Coronary heart disease alone accounted for 349,470 deaths in the United States in 2023, which is down by 22,036 and 5.9% from 371,506 a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Stroke caused 162,639 U.S. deaths in 2023, which is 2,754 and 1.7% fewer than 165,393 in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The American Heart Association said cardiovascular disease accounted for an average of one death every 34 seconds in 2023 and 218.3 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Heart disease accounted for an average of one death every 3 minutes, and stroke accounted for one death every 3 minutes and 14 seconds in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;The good news is that, overall, fewer people are dying from any cause, and death rates are improving as life expectancy continues to rebound after the COVID\u001e19 pandemic,&#8221; said Dr. Latha P. Palaniappan, American Heart Association volunteer chair of the statistics update writing committee and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;However, about half of all U.S. adults continue to have some form of cardiovascular disease,&#8221; Palaniappan added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;Those rates are still higher than they were before the pandemic and persistent increases in common conditions, like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, continue to drive the risk.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Top_News\/US\/2026\/01\/21\/heart-disease-stroke\/7441769026995\/\">upi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jan. 21 (UPI) &#8212;&nbsp;More people die from heart disease and stroke than from anything else in the United States, despite a five-year decline, a study released Wednesday by the American Heart Association indicates. Heart disease is the single greatest cause of death, while stroke has moved up to the fourth-leading cause of death,\u2002the association said&nbsp;in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":52910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[2399,2068,23116],"class_list":["post-52909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-disease","tag-heart","tag-stroke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52909"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52912,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52909\/revisions\/52912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}