Our findings reinforce the existing evidence on the association between
reaction time and mortality for the whole adult age range.
These data emphasize the importance of simple reaction time in the
risk prediction of cardiovascular disease mortality and indicate significant
net reclassification improvement. The addition of simple reaction
time to the traditional risk factors, which in this case were represented
by the Framingham risk categories (low, intermediate, and high), provided
a significant improvement in the identification of those individuals
at risk for future cardiovascular mortality. Thus, the finding from
the present study suggests that baseline simple reaction time is at
least as useful as the established cardiovascular risk factors.