An analysis of the relationship of systolic blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and smoking to 14-year mortality in the Chicago Peoples Gas Company Study -I. Total mortality in exponential-Weibull model

This paper is the first of two presenting newly developed statistical techniques for relating risk factors to heart disease and mortality for use with data from prospective epidemiological studies. This, the first paper, examines the relationship of systolic blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and smoking to death, from all causes, in an exponential-Weibull model. This model utilizes the time of death for an individual as the primary variable, with the risk factors treated as covariates of survival time. This new model, while overcoming the principal drawbacks and objections to the multiple logistic function, is shown to give results which are both comparable and similar to those of the multiple logistic.