Dose-response association between adult height and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies

Background We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis from published cohort studies to examine the association of adult height and all-cause mortality and to further explore the dose–response association. Methods PubMed, The Cochrane Library, The Ovid, CNKI, CQVIP and Wanfang databases were searched for articles published from database inception to 6 February 2018. We used the DerSimonian–Laird random-effects model to estimate the quantitative association between adult height and all-cause mortality and the restricted cubic splines to model the dose–response association. Results We included 15 articles, with 1 533 438 death events and 2 854 543 study participants. For each 5-cm height increase below the average, the risk of all-cause mortality was reduced by 7% [relative risk (RR) = 0.93, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.89–0.97] for men and 5% (RR = 0.95, 95% CI, 0.90–0.99) for women. All-cause mortality had a U-shaped association with adult height, the lowest risk occurring at 174 cm for men and 158 cm for women (both Pnonlinearity Conclusions Our study suggests that the relation between adult height and all-cause mortality is approximately U-shaped in both men and women.