Height in young adulthood and risk of death from cardiorespiratory disease: A prospective study of male former students of Glasgow University, Scotland

To investigate the association between height in young, socially homogeneous males and cause-specific mortality, the authors conducted a prospective study of 8,361 male former students who underwent medical examinations while attending Glasgow University, Scotland, from 1948 to 1968. The mean age at examination was 20.5 (range, 16.1-30.0) years. The median follow-up time was 41.3 years. There were 863 deaths. In Cox proportional hazards modeling, there was no association between height and all-cause mortality with age-adjusted hazard ratios per 10-cm increase in height (hazard ratio = 0.92, 95% confidence interval: 0.83, 1.02). Height was inversely associated with all cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease mortality, with hazard ratios per 10-cm increase in height of 0.78 (95% confidence interval: 0.66, 0.93) and 0.76 (95% confidence interval: 0.62, 0.93), respectively. Sizeable inverse associations with stroke and respiratory disease were also found, although these did not reach conventional levels of significance. There was no association with cancer or noncardiorespiratory disease mortality. There was a positive, although nonsignificant, association between height and mortality from aortic aneurysm. Controlling for confounding variables had little effect on these results. The findings suggest that factors operating in early life, and which influence height, also influence future cardiovascular health in men.