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. 2009 Feb 19;338:b349. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b349

Table 4.

 Rates and relative risk of incident stroke by number of health behaviours, adjusted by age, sex, and BMI, systolic blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, social class category (manual and non-manual), and aspirin use stratified by sex, age, body mass index, and social class in men and women aged 40-79 without known stroke and myocardial infarction in EPIC-Norfolk 1993-2007, Cox regression model

Category Events/No of participants Health behaviour score P value
4 3 2 1 0
By sex
Male 289/8967 1.0 1.05 (0.71 to 1.54) 1.35 (0.92 to 1.98) 1.84 (1.20 to 2.82) 1.48 (0.62 to 3.53) 0.012
Female 310/11 073 1.0 1.21 (0.85 to 1.71) 1.82 (1.29 to 2.59) 2.58 (1.73 to 3.84) 3.49 (1.71 to 7.12) <0.001
By age group
<65 years 194/14 178 1.0 1.27 (0.83 to 1.93) 2.02 (1.32 to 3.08) 1.92 (1.10 to 3.37) 4.48 (2.06 to 9.76) <0.001
≥65 years 405/5862 1.0 1.06 (0.77 to 1.48) 1.39 (1.01 to 1.93) 2.22 (1.56 to 3.15) 1.48 (0.67 to 3.27) <0.001
By BMI
<25 222/8096 1.0 0.83 (0.57 to 1.22) 1.28 (0.87 to 1.88) 1.62 (1.04 to 2.54) 2.76 (1.34 to 5.69) 0.001
25-30 283/9091 1.0 1.41 (0.95 to 2.10) 1.85 (1.24 to 2.76) 2.65 (1.70 to 4.13) 1.29 (0.39 to 4.22) <0.001
≥30 94/2853 1.0 2.17 (0.84 to 5.65) 2.67 (1.05 to 6.84) 4.12 (1.53 to 11.12) 4.59 (1.08 to 19.53) 0.036
By social class
Non-manual 351/12 182 1.0 1.12 (0.81 to 1.55) 1.73 (1.25 to 2.39) 2.38 (1.63 to 3.47) 3.23 (1.59 to 6.55) <0.001
Manual 248/7858 1.0 1.20 (0.78 to 1.84) 1.42 (0.93 to 2.18) 2.02 (1.27 to 3.22) 1.61 (0.66 to 3.89) 0.022