Dementia is now the leading cause of death – overtaking heart disease for the first time

DEMENTIA and Alzheimer’s disease are now the leading cause of death in England and Wales, new figures show.

An ageing population and better diagnosis of the condition has led to dementia and Alzheimer’s knocking heart disease from the top spot for the first time, experts said.

Of the 529,655 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2015, 11.6 per cent were attributable to dementia or Alzheimer’s – the most common form of dementia – according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Among people aged 80 or over, dementia and Alzheimer’s accounted for 13.7 per cent of male deaths and 21.2 per cent of deaths among women.

But the mortality rate for dementia and Alzheimer’s has more than doubled over the last five years, the figures show.

Due to improvements in treatment, diagnosis and awareness, the mortality rates for the other top five leading causes of death – including ischaemic heart disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, lung cancer and cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes – have fallen since 2001.

The ONS data shows that for 2015, ischaemic heart diseases – which restricts blood flow to tissues –  was the second leading cause of death, accounting for 11.5 per cent of deaths behind dementia and Alzheimer’s.

However, when the figures are broken down by gender, heart disease is still the leading cause of death for men, while dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were the main cause of death among women.

Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “These figures once again call attention to the uncomfortable reality that currently, no one survives a diagnosis of dementia.

“Some of the increase can be explained by a rise in diagnosis rates and a change in the way dementia is recorded on death certificates, offering a more accurate picture of the impact of dementia.

“With growing numbers of people living with dementia, we urgently need treatments that can stop or slow the diseases that drive this devastating condition.

“Thanks to better treatments and prevention programmes, deaths from many other serious conditions have been steadily dropping: now we must do the same for dementia.

“Dementia is not an inevitable part of ageing, it’s caused by diseases that can be fought through research, and we must bring all our efforts to bear on what is now our greatest medical challenge.”

The new figures also show large variation among age groups – people over 80 were more likely to die from dementia and Alzheimer’s deaths – while suicide was the leading cause of deaths for people aged under 35.

Meanwhile, breast cancer remains the leading cause of death for women aged 35 to 49.

Cancer still remains one of the biggest killers – all forms of cancer are grouped together, cancer was the most common cause of death in 2015, accounting for 27.9 per cent of all deaths.

Elizabeth McLaren, head of life event statistics at the ONS, said: “In 2015, 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.”

, which aims to raise awareness of the impact the disease has on people’s lives.