4 preventable risk factors reduce US life expectancy and lead to health disparities

Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - 09:49 in Health & Medicine

A study published this week in PLoS Medicine finds that four risk factors - smoking, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and obesity - explain a substantial amount of the disparity in life expectancy amongst the 'Eight Americas,' which are groups of the US population that can be defined by race, and location and socioeconomic features of counties they live in. Together, these four risk factors are estimated to reduce life expectancy in the United States by 4.9 years in men and 4.1 years in women. The researchers calculate that disparities in life expectancy in the 'Eight Americas' would decline by 20% if the four risk factors were reduced to optimal levels...

Read the whole article on

More from

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net