List Of Research Studies Predicting Mortality In The Old

InquilineKea · November 22, 2010

Feel free to contribute. This might help in predicting the future mortality of various famous people given some event happening to them (hip fracture, their wife dies, they end up hospitalized, they get open heart surgery, etc.). Obviously, many predictions will turn out wrong. Sometimes, the healthiest nonagenarians just end up suddenly dying. But these predictions work as long as they're more accurate than intuition.

For the record though, I don't consider hazard ratios to be very significant until they're over 2 (and combined with other hazard ratios).

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Some people seem to have a period of extended frailty before death, whereas others seem to suddenly (and surprisingly) die. People who have lots of small strokes/heart attacks seem to become frail quite early, and often live with it for years before death (especially true if they have heart failure).

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With respect to the famous, we would expect somewhat lower mortality rates than average simply because the famous are unusually likely to be "successful" (and "successful" often implies being rich and socially connected). Furthermore, if they lose their spouse, it's easier for them to get someone else to hang around with (Cronkite and Chen Ning Yang both remarried at very advanced ages).

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Surprisingly, hip fractures can cause surprisingly increased death rates: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/825363-overview.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=A...mp;searchtype=a

Especially in centenarians: http://www.slideshare.net/olivercw/hip-fra...in-centenarians

Increased death rates among widowers: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-...ar-widowed.html (yes I know dailymail is not credible, but the facts seem valid here)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1982801/

But remarriage drastically decreases them: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,954902,00.html

Prevalence of pain among those in their last few months: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-11-03/bay-...lderly-patients

(some people will complain about it more - it appears that those with arthritis are especially more likely to do so)

Increased mortality rates of those with rheumatoid arthritis: http://rawarrior.com/mortality-and-rheumatoid-arthritis/

Life Expectancy Studies

With regard to reduced life expectancy for rheumatoid arthritis patients, the standardized mortality ratio from different studies has ranged from 1.13 to 2.98. This mainly applies to rheumatoid factor positive cases, although a subgroup of rheumatoid factor negative cases with an adverse long-term prognosis exists. Clinically based studies probably overestimate the true shortening of life span and population-based studies may underestimate it.

In 1989, a study was done in Finland of 1666 people who had died and had been receiving medication for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Demographic data on the Finnish population and sickness insurance statistics were used as the basis for computations. Results indicated that the life span of subjects with RA was shortened by 15-20% from the date of onset of illness.

about 40% of the excess deaths were due to cardiovascular causes

about 30% due to infections

about 15% due to amyloidosis

the remaining 15% were due to various other causes

Anemia: (hazard ratio of ~1.4-2)

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/181/3-4/151

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Geriatrics/Gen...eriatrics/15244

http://www.acpjc.org/Content/151/6/issue/A...9-151-6-013.htm

"Strong will" (whatever that means): [weak will has hazard ratio of ~1.64]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723425/

Frailty and death in China:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667569/

Diagnosis of diabetes at older ages (not as bad as diagnosis at earlier ages):

http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/5/463.full

Grip Strength:

http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.or...t/61/7/707.full