PRESENTATION OF THE RIFLE PROJECT RISK-FACTORS AND LIFE EXPECTANCY

Plans are presented for conducting an epidemiological observational pr oject which will pool the data from nine Italian field studies coverin g over 70,000 men and women aged 20 to 69 years, belonging to 52 popul ation samples distributed in 13 different regions of the country. The main objective is to produce multivariate models for the prediction of all-cause mortality, life expectancy and selected causes of death as a function of some baseline characteristics. The entry examinations of the population samples were performed between 1978 and 1987 with the measurements of risk factors and other personal characteristics mainly related to cardiovascular diseases and other chronic conditions. They include a large number of anthropometric, social, biochemical, biophy sical, clinical, nutritional and behavioural measurements, although on ly a limited subset of them is common to all the studies. The collecti on of data on life status, mortality and causes of death has already b een completed for 45 out of the 52 samples, although for lengths of fo llow-up varying from 4 to 12 years. The systematic analysis of this da ta bank will be started in 1993.