Cancer is leading cause of death for Hispanics

LOS ANGELES — Cancer has become the leading cause of death among Hispanics in the U.S., 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 599,413 Ameri- can 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 Hispanics 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 Hispanics 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 distribu- tion,” Siegel said.

Cancer incidence and cancer deaths among Hispanics remain lower than in non-Hispanic whites, and rates of both continue to fall due to improvements in lifestyle, early detection and treatment.

At the same time, advances in the treatment of heart disease have caused death rates to fall even faster, Siegel said.