Impact of Behavioral Risk Factors on Mortality Risk in Older Korean Women

Background: to investigate the impact of lifestyle risk factors on all-cause and cardiovascular disease (cvd) mortality in korean women aged 60 yr and older. methods: data (n = 3,034) obtained from the korean longitudinal study of aging were analyzed. exposures included lifestyle risk factors, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, underweight/obesity, physical inactivity, and unin-tentional weight loss. primary outcomes were premature deaths from specific and all-causes. results: during 9.6±2.0 yr of follow-up, there were 628 cases (20.7%) of death from all causes, of which 137 cases (4.5%) were from cvd. compared to zero risk factor (hazard ratio, hr=1), crude hr of all-cause mortality was 2.277 (95% confidence interval, ci, 1.712 ~ 3.030, p < 0.001) for one risk factor, 2.977 (95% ci, 2.124 ~ 4.003, p < 0.001) for two risk factors, and 5.154 (95% ci, 3.515 ~ 7.557, p < 0.001) for three or more risk factors. compared to zero risk factor (hr=1), crude hr of cvd mortality was 2.035 (95% ci, 1.422 ~ 2.913, p < 0.001) for one risk factor, 2.468 (95% ci, 1.708 ~ 3.567, p < 0.001) for two risk factor, and 4.484 (95% ci, 2.830 ~ 7.102, p < 0.001) for three or more risk factors. adjusted hrs of all-cause (p = 0.016) and cvd (p = 0.050) for three or more risk factors only remained significant for three or more risk factors. conclusion: the current findings showed that individual and combined lifestyle risk factors were significantly associated with increased risks of all-cause and cvd mortality in older korean women.