Western Europeans living longer
Friday March 18th, 2011
Life expectancy is rising in Europe, despite the rise in obesity, according to a new analysis.
An
analysis of trends over the past 40 years by Professor David Leon, of
the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, offers a different
picture to the concerns that people may die younger because of health
problems arising from obesity.
Prof Leon, an epidemiologist and population health expert, says that in the last five years most European countries have been going in a positive direction for the first time in decades.
An important contributor to this has been the decline in deaths from heart disease, particularly in the UK where, he says, there have been “some of the largest and most rapid falls of any Western European country, partly due to improvements in treatment as well as reductions in smoking and other risk factors”.
“Despite what many may have assumed, and without being complacent, current trends in European life expectancy are in a positive direction,” he says in an editorial in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
“But while the European experience since 1980 underlines the centrality of the social, political and economic determinants of health, many intriguing and important questions remain unanswered about the drivers of these extraordinary trends.”
He reveals there is still a huge contrast between the East and West of Europe, where the former Communist bloc is struggling to catch up with its western neighbours.
The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has led to a rise in life expectancy in central Europe such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.
But because the increase has been similar to that in Western Europe, the two halves of the Continent have been following “parallel trajectories”.
This makes the East-West gap “very difficult to eliminate”, says Prof Leon.
However, trends in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union have been less positive, with life expectancy going up and down dramatically over the past 25 years, due, largely, to changes in hazardous drinking, particularly among men.
Trends in European life expectancy: a salutary view. David A Leon. International Journal of Epidemiology 2011;1–7 doi:10.1093/ije/dyr061
Tags: Europe | Fitness | General Health
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