U.S. death rate up for the first time in a decade

The 2015 U.S. death rate rose for the first time in a decade, partly because more people died from drug overdoses, suicide and Alzheimer's disease, according to preliminary federal data released Wednesday.

The death rate rose to 729.5 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States in 2015, up from 723.2 in 2014, said the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease took the most American lives in 2015, which saw the death rate from heart disease rose to 167.1 from 166.7 in 2014, up for the first time since 1993.

The death rate from suicides rose to 13.1 in the third quarter of 2015, from 12.7 in the same quarter of 2014, the data show.

The finding seemed to fit the broader pattern of rising mortality among working-class whites, a trend that has drawn significant attention during this election cycle, said a New York Times report, noting that certain groups, in particular less educated whites, have been hardest hit by the prescription drug epidemic and suffered from sharp rises in death rates.

However, it was too early to tell whether the rising mortality among whites had pushed up the overall national death rate since preliminary federal data is not broken down by race and final data will not be out until later this year, said the report.

"It's an uptick in mortality and that doesn't usually happen, so it's significant," Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, was quoted as saying.

"If we start looking at 2016 and we see another rise, we'll be a lot more concerned." he said.

Death rates have been declining for years in the United States thanks to improvements in health, disease management and medical technology, said the report. Endit