The Mortality and Ageing Working Group

The Mortality and Ageing Working Group is responsible for the centralization and harmonization of data on overall and cause-specific mortality data within the EPIC cohort. The relationship between several lifestyle exposures, including smoking, alcohol intake, poor diet and all-cause and cause-specific mortality was the object of recent epidemiological evaluations [1-2]. The attributable fraction of these factors on the occurrence of premature death among Europeans was also estimated [3].

Recently, the Mortality and Ageing Working group has strengthened its collaboration with international experts on mortality Registries. In collaboration with Dr Grégoire Rey, head of the CépiDC-INSERM team in France, a survey was developed and circulated among the EPIC PIs to obtain information on the way causes of death are collected in each EPIC centre. The results of this survey are instrumental to consolidate the forthcoming updates of the EPIC mortality data, which is expected to be implemented in 2021. The same collaboration with Dr Grégoire Rey also led to the development of several on-going projects on survival, cancer-specific survival and net survival within the EPIC cohort. Other ongoing projects in collaboration with the EPIC Multimorbidity and Ageing Working Group focus on the impact of cardiometabolic comorbidities (cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes) prior to a cancer diagnosis on total and cancer-specific survival among cancer patients.



Selected publications

  1. Ferrari P, Licaj I, Muller D, Andersen PK et al. Lifetime alcohol use and overall and cause-specific mortality in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition (EPIC) study. BMJ Open. 2014; 4(7): e005245
  2. Leenders M, Boshuizen HC, Ferrari P, Siersema PD et al. Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Cause-Specific Mortality in the EPIC Study. Eur J Epidemiol. 2014;29(9):639-652.
  3. Muller DC, Murphy N, Johansson M, Ferrari P et al. Modifiable causes of premature death in middle-age in Western Europe: results from the EPIC cohort study. BMC Medicine 2016; 14(1), 87.
  4. Mullee A, Romaguera D, Pearson-Stuttard J, Viallon V et al. Association between soft drink consumption and mortality in 10 European countries. JAMA Intern Med. 2019; 179(11) :1479-1490.

Contact details/Working Group leaders

Pietro Ferrari, PhD
Nutritional Methodology and Biostatistics Group
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO)
25 avenue Tony Garnier
CS 90627
69366 LYON CEDEX 07
France
FerrariP@iarc.who.int

Vivian Viallon, PhD
Nutritional Methodology and Biostatistics Group
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO)
25 avenue Tony Garnier
CS 90627
69366 LYON CEDEX 07
France
ViallonV@iarc.who.int