Cancer has become the leading cause of death among U.S. Latinos
Nosing past heart disease in 2009, researchers at the American Cancer Society reported Monday. For most demographic groups and for the country as a whole heart disease is the top killer, claiming a total of 599,413 American lives in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 567,628 Americans died of cancer. Among Latinos that year, the rankings were reversed: 29,935 died of cancer and 29,611 of heart disease, according to a study in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The change may be due to demographics, said Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta and lead author of the study. The average age of Latinos in the United States is 27 and of non-Hispanic whites is 42. In the overall population, cancer is the leading cause of death in people under 85 years of age. "This is primarily driven by the young age distribution," Siegel sai