The risk of dying can be calculated – Swedish Radio

Researchers at Uppsala University have designed a computer program that can calculate your risk of dying within five years. The program is based on self-reported data from half a million Britons.

Risk Calculator is based on a large study week The Lancet which made comparisons and examined the relationship between more than 650 different socio-economic, biological and psychological factors in one of the world’s largest study, the UK Biobank (UK Biobank). There is information and the fates of nearly half a million Britons that researchers carefully followed for five years.

– We have a computer algorithm that figures out how to have answered all the questions. Based on this, one can calculate the absolute risk of dying within five years, says Erik Ingelsson professor of molecular epidemiology and head of the study.

The researchers were able to find out which of the 650 factors that best predict the risk of death .

– It turned out that questions like “how do you appreciate your own health?” and “how fast do you go?” were among the strongest factors for predicting the risk of dying within five years. It was interesting and actually a bit surprising, says Erik Ingelsson.

He says that self-reporting data could better predict the risk of death, compared to those you usually have to measure, such as blood pressure or fat composition. One of the strongest factors were the speed at which a person normally goes. A slow walking speed increases, the estimated risk of dying within five years, he says.

But it’s not about you at risk to die just because you are slow, but about the underlying causes of the walking speed.

– You can imagine that people who go slowly are sick, overweight, or maybe smoke. And that in turn increases the risk that they will die.

The strength of the self-reporting issues have done that, based on 11 questions for women and 13 for men, can calculate its likely to die within five years, and based on that also have a corresponding age.

– If I am 40 years old in real life, but my “ubble-age” (tool name) is 20, it means that my lifestyle and my biological parameters makes my risk of dying within 5 years is the same as a person in their 20s, explains Erik Ingelsson.

Link to this site and the tool Ubble

Katarina Sundberg, Science Radon
Katarina.Sundberg@Sverigesradio.se

Source: Andrea Ganna & amp; Erik Ingelsson, 2015. 5 year mortality predictors in 498,103 UK Biobank Participants: A prospective population-based study. The Lancet.