Abstract 4234: Association between educational level and mortality: A pooled analysis of over 694,000 individuals in the Asia Cohort Consortium
Authors: Yang Keming , Zhang Ying , Saito Eiko , Chen Yu , Gupta Prakash C. , Gao Yu-Tang , Tamakoshi Akiko , Xiang Yong-Bing , Koh Woon-Puay , Sawada Norie , Sugiyama Kemmyo , Tomata Yasutake , Sadakane Atsuko , Nagata Chisato , You San-Lin , Wang Renwei , Shin Myung-Hee , Ahsan Habibul , Pan Wen-Harn , Pednekar Mangesh S. , Yuan Jian-Min , Shu Xiao-Ou , Cai Hui , Tsugane Shoichiro , Tsuji Ichiro , Kanemura Seiki , Wada Keiko , Ahn Yoon-Ok , Ozasa Kotaro , Potter John D. , Zheng Wei , Nan Hongmei 
Published: August 2018

Background: Higher educational levels have been linked to reduced risk of death in previous studies. Most of these studies, however, were conducted in the United States and Europe.

Methods: We performed a pooled analysis to evaluate the association between educational levels and risk of death among 694,434 Asian individuals from 15 prospective cohort studies that participated in the Asia Cohort Consortium. The analysis included 103,023 deaths during a mean follow-up period of 12.5 years, among which 33,945 were due to cancer and 34,645 were due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We employed Cox proportional hazards regression models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for the association between educational level and the risk of death after adjusting for potential confounders.

Results: Higher educational levels were significantly associated with lower risk of death from all causes; compared to a low educational level (≤ primary school), HRs and 95% CIs for secondary education, trade/technical education, and ≥ university degree were 0.86 (0.83-0.90), 0.80 (0.71-0.89), and 0.68 (0.61-0.75), respectively (Ptrend &lt;0.0001). Similar associations were observed for cancer or CVD-specific mortality, with HRs of 0.93 (0.89-0.97), 0.87 (0.78-0.97), and 0.79 (0.71-0.87) for risk of cancer deaths with increasing levels of education (Ptrend = 0.003) and HRs of 0.86 (0.81-0.91), 0.75 (0.64-0.87), and 0.64 (0.57-0.73) for risk of CVD deaths with increasing levels of education (Ptrend &lt;0.0001). The pattern of the association among East Asians and South Asians was similar; compared to ≤ primary school, HR (95% CI) for all-cause mortality associated with ≥ university degree was 0.68 (0.61-0.76) among 539,724 East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) and 0.61 (0.54-0.69) among 154,710 South Asians (Indians and Bangladeshis) included in this analysis.

Conclusions: Higher educational level was associated with substantially lower risk of death in Asian populations including both East and South Asians.

Citation Format: Keming Yang, Ying Zhang, Eiko Saito, Yu Chen, Prakash C. Gupta, Yu-Tang Gao, Akiko Tamakoshi, Yong-Bing Xiang, Woon-Puay Koh, Norie Sawada, Kemmyo Sugiyama, Yasutake Tomata, Atsuko Sadakane, Chisato Nagata, San-Lin You, Renwei Wang, Myung-Hee Shin, Habibul Ahsan, Wen-Harn Pan, Mangesh S. Pednekar, Jian-Min Yuan, Xiao-Ou Shu, Hui Cai, Shoichiro Tsugane, Ichiro Tsuji, Seiki Kanemura, Keiko Wada, Yoon-Ok Ahn, Kotaro Ozasa, John D. Potter, Wei Zheng, Hongmei Nan. Association between educational level and mortality: A pooled analysis of over 694,000 individuals in the Asia Cohort Consortium [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 4234.