Being male, smoking past the age of 30 and having difficulty walking 100 metres all increase the likelihood of dying in people over the age of 50.
A Trinity College study has identified 14 risk factors which raise the odds of mortality in people over 50 in Ireland in the next four years.
The pioneering research used data from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) to detect the factors which increase risk of death in the older population.
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It found within four years 448 of 8,174 participants, or 5.5%, had died with men over 50 more than one and a half times more likely to die than their female counterparts. People with a cancer diagnosis were 3.3 times more likely to pass away while people who had suffered a heart attack were 1.8 times more likely to die in the time period.
Researchers found those who smoked past the age of 30 were 2.2 times more likely to pass away in four years while those who had difficulty lifting 10 pounds were 1.6 times more likely to die.
Mobility was also a strong factor with those having difficulty being able to walk 100 metres deemed 2.1 more likely to die in the time period while those reporting difficulty using the toilet had 3.2 times greater odds of mortality in the period.
People who reported their physical health as ‘poor’ were 1.7 times more likely to die in the next four years while those who had more than one emergency department or hospital admission in the last year were also 1.7 times greater mortality risk.
Trinity research professor Dr Peter May said they were surprised to find daily drinking wasn’t one of the independent predictors of mortality.
He also said the Irish data was very similar to the data uncovered in the US.
“Internationally, we were really surprised by how little difference there was with other countries.
“There’s being male and age, which are things that are not under our day-to-day control but there are other things like being regularly active, avoiding risky behaviours like smoking, those are the decisive factors everywhere as far as we can tell.”
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