the association of selfrated health and mortalitya 7year followup study of a japanese community this study aims to examine whether selfrated health is an independent predictor of causespecific mortality even after the influence by a variety of factors in relation to mortality reported by previous studies have been excluded this study included randomly selected 4259 inhabitants 1827 men and 2432 women in y city fukuoka prefecture japan aged from 30 to 79 in 1987 these subjects were surveyed in 1987 by selfadministered questionnaires regarding selfrated health as well as life habits and followed up for their vital status and underlying causes of death after excluding the individuals who were lost to follow up or who didnt respond to the question on selfrated health 4046 individuals were analysed to see the relationship between selfrated health and causespecific mortality by cox proportional hazard models controlling for sex age smoking bmi medical care use and adl it was shown that relative risks for all causes cancer circulatory disease and other causes among the unhealthy group were 295 95 ci 193450 296 153573 232 086626 and 409 212789 relatively in the analyses of the subgroup subjects without diseases in 1987 or subjects excluding deceased cases within first 3 years after followup to avoid selection bias the association between selfrated health and mortality was substantially similar to the results obtained in the former analysis even the association was weakened even after excluding both of the subjects with diseases in 1987 and the subjects who died in the first 3 years after followup selfrated health could be associated with mortality from all causes rr 189 95ci 091394 from the results it is suggested that selfrated health itself can be the independent predictor of mortality