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 Over the 16-year study, religious service attendance was linked to a
substantial reduction in mortality, Tyler J. VanderWeele, of the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, told Reuters
Health by email.
VanderWeele and colleagues analyzed data collected every four years
between 1996 and 2012 from nearly 75,000 women participating in the
Nurses’ Health Study. Most were Catholic or Protestant.
As reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, about 14,000 of the women
attended religious services more than once a week, about 30,400
attended once a week, about 12,000 less than once a week, and nearly
18,000 never attended.
Women who attended religious services regularly were 33 percent less
likely to die during the study period, compared with women who never
attended services. Once-a-week attendees were 26 percent less likely
to die, and those attending less than once a week were 23 percent
less likely to die.
Overall, frequent religious attendance was associated with a 27
percent lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease and a
21 percent lower risk of death from cancer. Frequent attendance was
also associated with significantly less risk of breast cancer and
colorectal cancer.
“Although attendance at religious services was associated with lower
cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, attendance was not
significantly associated with incidence of breast cancer or
cardiovascular disease,” the researchers wrote.
So-called observational studies like this one can't prove cause and
effect, VanderWeele said. But, he added, “That we had data on both
service attendance and health repeatedly over time helps provide
evidence about the direction of causality.”
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Dr. Dan German Blazer, of Duke University Medical Center in Durham,
North Carolina, who wrote an accompanying commentary, told Reuters
Health by email, “Though we do not know the mechanisms, research and
especially this study, emphasize the importance of religious service
attendance to health.
Because the study only included middle-aged and older professional
women, "we do not know whether the results would hold for men or for
younger persons,” Blazer said. “We need to continue to chip away at
a better empirical understanding of cause and effect and refrain
from either over-generalizing these results or dismissing them as
impossible to better understand.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/255mofm and http://bit.ly/23UNlfL JAMA
Internal Medicine, online May 16, 2016.
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