Objective There is certainly little long-term data on the association between the serum albumin levels and mortality in community-based populations. 0.06-0.73) and cerebro-cardiovascular death (HR: 0.19, 95% CI: 0.06-0.63). The HRs for all-cause and cerebro-cardiovascular death in the highest quartile vs. the lowest quartile of albumin after adjusting for confounders were 0.59 (95%CI:0.39-0.88) and 0.15 (95%CI: 0.03-0.66), respectively. Conclusion The serum albumin Rabbit polyclonal to MCAM level was thus found to be a predictor of all-cause and cerebro-cardiovascular death in a general population. Keywords: albumin, mortality, epidemiology Introduction Although it has been reported that low levels of serum albumin are associated with greater all-cause mortality in the general population (1,2), the impact of serum albumin and nutrient intake on long-term mortality remains scant. The normal serum concentration of albumin in healthy adults is 4.0 g/dL, while hypoalbuminemia is defined as a serum albumin level of 3.4 g/L (3). A meta-analysis by Vincent et al. (4) suggested that hypoalbuminemia is a powerful, reproducible and independent risk factor that predicts a poor outcome in patients with acute illness. This finding has been consistently and pervasively observed. In older veteran patients, hypoalbuminemia at 3 months after hospital discharge was associated with a poor long-term prognosis (5). However, most reports have been limited to cause-specific death 852391-19-6 manufacture (6-9) and in-hospital outcomes (10,11). A study of patients with end-stage renal disease revealed that low serum albumin levels in the presence of vascular disease might not reflect the nutritional state (6). Hence, a reference standard of nutritional measurement should be used to determine the presence of protein malnutrition. Cooper et al. (7) also suggested that protein malnutrition and hypoalbuminemia are independent predictors of morbidity and mortality, whereas hypoalbuminemia predicts vascular morbidity (7), supporting the hypothesis that hypoalbuminemia is pathogenically associated with vascular disease, but the effect is dissociated from protein malnutrition in patients with 852391-19-6 manufacture end-stage renal disease. To elucidate whether serum albumin levels and protein malnutrition are associated with cause-specific death and dietary habits, it is necessary to examine this relationship in a large number of subjects with confirmed dietary habits from an over-all population. We consequently investigated the human relationships between serum albumin amounts and proteins malnutrition and cause-specific loss of life in an over-all human population in Japan. Strategies and Components Topics In 1999, we performed an epidemiological study in Tanushimaru, a little rural community in southwestern Japan. This is a cohort from the Seven Countries Research (12). As reported previously, the demographic history of the topics in this field is comparable to that of the overall Japanese human population (13). Subjects having a known background of myocardial 852391-19-6 manufacture infarction (n=2), heart stroke (n=3), tumor (n=5) or irregular Q waves (n=5) (Minnesota 852391-19-6 manufacture rules I-1,2) (14) were excluded from the study. Finally, serum albumin data were obtained from 1,905 subjects (783 males, 1,122 females) of 40 to 95 years of age [40-49 years, n=282 (male, n=102; female, n=180); 50-59 years, n=450 (male, n=178; female, n=272); 60-69 years, n=623 (male, n=259; female, n=364); 70-79 years, n=464 (male, n=206; female, n=258); 80 years, n=86 (male, n=48; female, n=38)], over a 15-year period (Fig. 1). The respondents accounted for 48.2% of the men and 62.0% of the women in Tanushimaru who were older than 40 years of age (total target population: 3,463). The follow-up rate was 95.1%. Figure 1. A flow diagram of the assessment of the.