Table 1.

Characteristics of the study population.

	Women				Men
	Cases		Referents		Cases		Referents		Sex differences	Case-reference differences
	n	mean or %	n	mean or %	n	mean or %	n	mean or %	p	p
Age, years	82	67.5	149	66.9	264	64.9	461	65.1	0.0003	0.97
Urban dwellers, %	56	68.3	106	71.1	155	58.7	272	59.0	0.0022	0.77
Single, %	29	35.4	64	43.2	33	12.6	94	20.7	<0.0001	0.0041
University education, %	17	20.7	41	27.7	53	20.3	115	25.1	0.56	0.0634
Daily smokers, %	12	14.8	18	12.2	34	13.0	74	16.3	<0.0001	<0.0001
Snuff takers, %	0	0	1	0.7	26	10.0	57	12.5	<0.0001	0.65
Old age pension, %	48	58.5	99	66.9	120	45.5	255	55.7	0.0016	0.0034
Disability pension, %	16	19.5	15	10.1	31	11.7	51	11.1	0.38	0.21
Sick-listed
Among all, %	15	19.2	15	10.1	80	31.5	47	10.3	0.12	<0.0001
Among eligible, %	11	68.8	9	26.5	68	61.3	39	25.8	0.68	<0.0001

Characteristics of the study population. P-values refer to differences between men and women and between cases and referents in conditional analyses and p < 0.005 were regarded as statistically significant.