Ranking of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia among the leading causes of death in the US varies depending on NCHS or WHO definitions.

Introduction: We compared the ranking of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) among the leading causes of death (LCODs) between those according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) lists by sex.

Method: The number of deaths in each LCOD category was obtained from CDC WONDER.

Results: According to the WHO list, ADRD was the second LCOD from 2005 to 2013, the first from 2014 to 2020, and the third in 2021, respectively, for women and was the second in 2018 and 2019, the third in 2020, and the fourth in 2021, respectively, for men. According to the NCHS list, Alzheimer's disease was the fourth in 2019 and 2020 for women and was the seventh from 2016 to 2019 for men.

Discussion: The ranking of ADRD among the LCODs according to the WHO list was higher than those according to the NCHS list.