BMJ  2004;329:976-977 (23 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7472.976-b

Letter

Winter mortality in elderly people in Britain

Lack of social gradient in winter excess mortality is obvious in Denmark

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Despite smaller fluctuations in seasonal mortality in general,^{1 2} we obtained similar results for our analysis of excess winter mortality in Denmark to those that Wilkinson et al found for Britain³: an increase of seasonality with age, higher excess winter mortality for women—especially for respiratory diseases—and a lack of a social gradient related to mortality in winter.

Our analysis used Danish register data and was based on all women and men aged 65 and older in Denmark between 1980 and 1998. These 1.8 million people survived on average about 100 months during the observation period (186 271 440 person months lived). Using logistic regression, we obtained the following results: the odds ratios showed that winter mortality from all causes was 17.9% higher for women and 15.7% higher for men than during summer. The disadvantage of women was even more pronounced for respiratory diseases, with an excess of 55.4% . . . [Full text of this article]

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany rau@demogr.mpg.de

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