Study: Life expectancy declines in US

Drug overdoses, suicides, alcohol and obesity are among leading causes

The life expectancy of US citizens has declined for three years in a row due to a host of problems, including drug overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related illnesses and obesity, a medical study has found.

The study published in November in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, looked at data from 1959 to 2017 and found that life expectancy had declined from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017.

Deaths increased most in the Ohio Valley, which includes the states of Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky, followed by northern New England, which includes the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.