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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. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

THURSDAY, Nov. 14, 2024 -- After decades of battling the opioid epidemic, U.S. health officials reported Wednesday that overdose deaths have now declined for the second year in a row. By how much did these deaths of despair drop? There were about 97,000 overdose deaths in the 12-month period that ended June 30, according to new provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . That’s down from an estimated 113,000 overdose deaths reported for the previous 12-month period. “This is a pretty stunning and rapid reversal of drug overdose mortality numbers,” Brandon Marshall , a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends, told the Associated Press. “This seems to be substantial and sustained. I think there’s real reason for hope here.” Opioid painkillers first started fueling an increase in overdose death rates during the 1990s, followed by other more potent opioids like heroin and fentanyl . Provisional data had indicated a slight drop in overdose deaths for 2023, and the latest tally has kept that decline going. While experts couldn't single out one factor that would explain the decrease, they did point to the pandemic as a possible player. During lockdowns and social distancing, addiction treatment was hard to find and people were isolated -- with no one around to help if they overdosed. “During the pandemic we saw such a meteoric rise in drug overdose deaths that it’s only natural we would see a decrease,” Farida Ahmad , of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told the AP . On top of that, the increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone and addiction treatments such as buprenorphine may be saving lives, Erin Winstanley , a University of Pittsburgh professor who researches drug overdose trends, told the AP . In the latest CDC data, overdose death reports are down in 45 states, with only five -- Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington -- reporting increases. One limitation of the new provisional data is that it doesn’t detail what’s happening in different racial and ethnic groups. “We really need more data from the CDC to learn whether these declines are being experienced in all racial ethnic subgroups,” Marshall noted. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.