Medical Students Live Longer Than Law, Arts, and Even Divinity Students

By Richard Woodman

LONDON (Reuters) Jul 31 - Medical students live longer than all other university graduates except possibly engineers, according to new study findings.

British epidemiologists investigated the link between mortality and faculty of study in 9887 men who had health checks while studying at Glasgow University between 1948 and 1968.

Data on their social background, smoking and drinking habits and other potential confounding factors were available on 8367 of these men, including 939 who had already died.

The findings, published in the August issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, show that the medics' mortality was lowest even though they had the second highest rates of smoking while at the university.

The risk of death was 42% higher among former arts students and 30% higher among law students.

Divinity students had the lowest blood pressure of any group at university and were least likely to consume alcohol, but their risk of dying was still 10% higher than the medics. Their consolation may be that the difference was not statistically significant.

Only engineering students did marginally better than the medics, but this result was also questionable statistically because of wide confidence intervals.

As for causes of death, arts students were twice as likely as medical students to die of lung cancer but half as likely to die from accident, suicide or violent means. However, the medics were twice as likely as all other students to die from alcohol-related causes.

Peter McCarron and colleagues at Glasgow and Belfast universities said there were several possible explanations for the longer life expectancy of medical students.

A medical or science degree was more likely than an arts degree to result in permanent employment and good income, factors known to benefit health. The same might be argued for law students but they were less likely to pursue the subject in later life.

J Royal Soc Med 2003;96:384-388.