Relationship between the life-style and long term mortality among middle-aged men

Abstract

Background: Importance of several risk factors was confirmed within Countrywide integrated noncommunicable disease (NCD) intervention program (CINDI) initiated by WHO in early seventies in Lithuania. Methodology and results were widely published up to 1995. A prescreening subset of psychosocial CINDI Kaunas data was re-analyzed to establish the presence of long term influence of life-style (LS) on mortality until 2014. Method: 6000 males aged 40-59 were prescreened in 1976 using questionnaire consisting of 48 health related LS items. The data was re-analyzed in 5 mortality categories among survivors and deceased until 2014. Deaths were coded using ICD-X. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox regression were used for statistical analysis. Findings: Evaluation of self-rated health, dietary habits, physical activity, and smoking were significantly related with mortality from all causes. General mortality revealed relationships with more items of LS (p<0,005), while separate categories of mortality, had fewer and more specific relationships. Discussion: This analysis confirms that life-style items as evaluated at prescreening phase of Kaunas CINDI using self-report questionnaire, had long-term influence on mortality from all causes. These findings substantiate health behavior interventions that could be delivered by health psychologists in a variety of settings to prevent premature death among middle-age men in the future.