The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that the life expectancy in the U.S. decreased in 2016 for the second year in a row. According to the CDC’s 2016 mortality report, the life expectancy for a member of the U.S. population born in 2016 was 78.6 years, down 0.1 years from the expectancy for a person born in 2015, a decline from 2014.

The drop in life expectancy has been linked to a surge in opioid related deaths in 2016. The CDC reports that drug overdoses jumped significantly in 2016 to more than 63,600 from 52,400 in 2015, and more than 42,200 of them were attributed to opioids. West Virginia continued to be the state with the highest drug overdose death rate, 52 deaths per 100,000 state residents in 2016.

The 10 leading causes of death --heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide-- remained the same as in 2015, but with some changes in ranking. Unintentional injuries (which includes drug overdoses), the fourth leading cause in 2015, became the third leading cause in 2016, while chronic lower respiratory diseases, the third leading cause in 2015, became the fourth leading cause. The 10 leading causes accounted for 74.1% of all deaths in the U.S. in 2016.

For the full report, visit http://bit.ly/2CsuAyn.