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Healthy Lifestyle and Life Expectancy at Age 30 in the Chinese Population
27 Pages Posted: 17 Dec 2021
More...Abstract
Aims: To investigate how healthy lifestyles could improve life expectancy in Chinese adults.
Methods and Results: We used the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study (n=487,209) to examine the relative risk of mortality associated with low-risk lifestyle factors (never smoking or quitting not for illness, no excessive alcohol use, being physically active, healthy eating habits, and healthy body shape). We estimated the national prevalences of lifestyle factors using data from the China Nutrition and Health Surveillance (2015) and derived mortality rates from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (2015). All three data sources were combined to estimate the life expectancy of individuals at age 30 following different levels of lifestyle factors using life table method. The life expectancy differences were analyzed using Arriaga’s decomposition method. Over a median follow-up of 11.1 years, we documented 42,496 deaths in CKB. The hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals [CIs]) of participants adopting five versus 0-1 low-risk factors was 0.38 (0.34, 0.43) for all-cause mortality, 0.37 (0.30, 0.46) for cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, 0.47 (0.39, 0.56) for cancer mortality, and 0.30 (0.14, 0.64) for chronic respiratory disease (CRD) mortality. The gained life expectancy (95%CI) at age 30 for individuals with five versus 0-1 low-risk factor was 8.7 years (6.8, 10.7) for men and 8.1 years (6.6, 9.7) for women. The extended life expectancy were mainly attributable to reduced death from CVD, especially for women (46.1%).
Conclusion: Population-wide healthy lifestyles initiatives would substantially improve the life expectancy of the Chinese population.
Funding Information: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key R&D Program of China, Kadoorie Charitable Foundation, UK Wellcome Trust.
Declaration of Interests We declare no competing interests.
Ethics Approval Statement: All participants signed informed consent forms. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Review Committee of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; Beijing, China) and the Oxford Tropical Research Ethics Committee, University of Oxford (UK).
Keywords: Healthy lifestyle, life expectancy, mortality, cardiovascular disease, China
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