Preventable causes of Death in the US

Research Article
The Preventable Causes of Death in the United States: Comparative Risk Assessment of Dietary, Lifestyle, and Metabolic Risk Factors

Goodarz Danaei1,2, Eric L. Ding1, Dariush Mozaffarian1,3, Ben Taylor4,5, Jürgen Rehm4,5,6, Christopher J. L. Murray7, Majid Ezzati1,2*
1 Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Initiative for Global Health, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 4 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 5 Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 6 Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany, 7 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, The University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Background
Knowledge of the number of deaths caused by risk factors is needed for health policy and priority setting. Our aim was to estimate the mortality effects of the following 12 modifiable dietary, lifestyle, and metabolic risk factors in the United States (US) using consistent and comparable methods: high blood glucose, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and blood pressure; overweight–obesity; high dietary trans fatty acids and salt; low dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids (seafood), and fruits and vegetables; physical inactivity; alcohol use; and tobacco smoking./.../