LONDON, Nov. 14 -- Dementia and Alzheimer's disease have, for the first time, replaced heart disease as the leading cause of death in England and Wales, due to more women dying from the disease, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Monday.
New figures from ONS show that 61,686 people died of dementia or Alzheimer's last year, accounting for 11.6 percent of all deaths.
Around 20,000 men died from dementia and Alzheimer's, while the disease accounted for the deaths of more than 40,000 women, statistics from ONS revealed.
ONS said the age-standardised mortality rate for dementia and Alzheimer's had more than doubled over the last five years for both men and women.
"The majority of these deaths were among females, while heart disease remains the leading cause of death amongst men," added ONS.
Elizabeth McLaren, head of Life Event Statistics at the ONS, said: "In 2017, dementia and Alzheimer's disease became the leading cause of death in part because people are simply living longer but also because of improved detection and diagnosis."
Another factor for the increase was that international rules for determining the underlying cause of death had been updated, as well as there being an "increase in cases attributed to these conditions accompanied by falls in other causes."
The ONS statistics show the leading cause of death varied widely by age group, with people over 80 years old accounting for the majority of dementia and Alzheimer's deaths.
Meanwhile, Suicide was the leading cause of death in those under age 35, while there was a higher prevalence of cancer deaths in those in middle age and when looking at more broad disease groups, cancer remained the most common cause of death in 2017.
Heart disease was the second leading cause of death in England and Wales, with 11.5 percent of all deaths registered in 2017.
For women, the leading cause of death in 2017 was dementia and Alzheimer disease, accounting for 15.2 percent of all deaths of women, up from 13.4 percent in 2017.
For men, heart diseases was the leading cause of death, accounting for 14.3 percent of all male deaths in 2017, compared with 14.8 percent in 2017.
In total, there were 529,655 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2017, an increase of 5.6 percent compared with 2017.