Salonen L, et al. - In this register-based prospective cohort study, the researchers tested diagnosis-specific sickness absences of different lengths as predictors of disability retirement in different occupational classes. They utilised Cox proportional hazards regression to analyse the relationship of sickness absence with the risk of all-cause disability retirement during an 8-year follow-up. The data presented in this work showed a long sickness absence was a strong predictor of disability retirement in all occupational classes. They suggested that preventing the accumulation of sickness absence days and designing more efficient policies for different occupational classes could be crucial to lessen the number of transitions to early retirement due to disability.