(CNN)The world is slowly seeing cancer surpass cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death among middle-age adults in several countries, according to a new study.
Among adults ages 35 to 70, cardiovascular disease still ranks as the leading cause of death globally, but the new research,ublished in the journal The Lancetn Tuesday, found that deaths from cancer are now more common than those from cardiovascular disease in some high-income and middle-income countries.
Those countries include Sweden, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Poland and Turkey.
The study is the largest of its kind analyzing causes of death across five continents, said Dr. Salim Yusuf, distinguished professor and executive director at the Population Health Research Institute atcMaster Universityin Canada, who was senior author of the study.
"We have been watching the decline in cardiovascular disease for a while in many countries," he said. "It was just a matter of time that the progress we make in reducing cardiovascular disease mortality will lead to a fall in death rates from cardiovascular disease below that of cancers."
The researchers noted in the study that "this epidemiological transition" might be due to improved prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in high-income countries, whereas successful strategies to prevent and treat cancers, other than tobacco control, are yet to lead to large reductions in most cancers.
The study involved analyzing data on deaths and diseases among 162,534 adults across five continents. The data came from a research effort called therospective Urban Rural Epidemiology, or PURE, study and dated from 2005 to 2016.
The countries where the adults were from were separated into three categories.
There were low-income countries: Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Then, middle-income countries: Philippines, Iran, South Africa, Colombia, China, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Poland, Argentina and Chile. Lastly, high-income countries: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Canada and Sweden. The study noted that there was no accurate estimate for income for Palestine, which was among the countries included.
After analyzing the data across those countries, the researchers found that non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, were the most common cause of deaths and illnesses globally among the adults.
The researchers also found that cardiovascular disease was more common in middle-income and low-income countries than in high-income countries.
Meanwhile, there was a higher incidence of death from cancer than cardiovascular disease in high-income countries and some upper middle-income countries, according to the data.
In the high-income countries, "death from cancer was twice that from cardiovascular disease," the researchers wrote in the study. Whereas, in the low-income countries, "death from cardiovascular disease was three times that from cancer," they wrote.
Some of the same researchers also authored a separate study,ublished in The Lancetn Tuesday, that found most cardiovascular disease cases and deaths around the world are preventable and can be attributed to a small number of common modifiable risk factors.
The most important ones are "high blood pressure, tobacco and lipids