Adult height and risk of cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis: A case-control study using the General Practice Research Database (GPRD)

It has been demonstrated that adult height has an inverse relationship with all cause mortality, and this association has generally been interpreted as reflecting the importance of early life events on long term health. We have used the GPRD to test the hypothesis that adult height is inversely related to risk of CFA. Cases were defined if a diagnosis of CFA was recorded anywhere in the patients records, and up to six controls were individually matched to each case by age, sex and practice. Cases and controls with a diagnosis of any connective tissue disease were excluded. Data were available for 890 cases and 5884 controls. The median age of cases at diagnosis was 71 years and 553 (62%) were male. Data on height were available for 63% of subjects and weight for 66%. Body mass indices were calculated and all anthropometric data receded as quintiles. The association between disease and quintile of anthropometric measurement was then estimated using conditional logistic regression: There was a significant inverse association between quintile of height and risk of disease (Table, likelihood ratio test p=0.01), but no association with weight (p=0.6) or body mass index (p=0.09). Quintile of height Odds ratio 95%CI First (shortest) 1 reference Second 0.67 (0.49 to 0.91) Third 0.54 (0.37 to 0.78) Forth 0.52 (0.35 to 0.77) Fifth 0.61 (0.41 to 0.90) This study provides the first evidence that adult height is inversely associated with risk of CFA. The possible explanations for these data, which include the influence of early life exposures, confounding by adult socioeconomic status, reverse causation and ascertainment bias, require further investigation.