Friday, 04/17/2026
Health
Adults with longer-lived parents may have healthier old age
Update: 14/09/2016
It’s already well known that having long-lived\r\nparents is associated with a lower risk for clogged arteries in the heart, and\r\nlonger survival.
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But what about other kinds of heart and blood vessel\r\nproblems?
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“To our knowledge,†the research team writes in the\r\nJournal of the American College of Cardiology, “this is the first study†to\r\nfind a link between parental longevity and lower risks for heart failure, the\r\nheart rhythm problem known as atrial fibrillation, as well as diseases of blood\r\nvessels in the arms and legs.
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The researchers looked at more than 186,000\r\nmiddle-aged offspring from England, Wales and Scotland who had a deceased\r\nparent. They started tracking participants between the ages of 55 and 73,\r\nfollowing them for at least eight years.
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Not surprisingly, the older a participant’s mother\r\nand father were at their death, the longer the participant lived, too. This was\r\ntrue even when participants’ age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, smoking,\r\nalcohol use, physical activity and body mass index were taken into account.
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But the researchers also found that offspring of\r\nlonger-lived parents were less likely to have strokes, high blood pressure,\r\nanemia, high cholesterol, atrial fibrillation and circulation disorders\r\naffecting blood vessels outside of the heart and brain that are known as\r\nperipheral vascular disease.
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“This research is important as it shows that knowing\r\nthe age at which your parents died provides information on your own risk of\r\ndeath and disease,†said study co-author Dr. Luke C. Pilling, a research fellow\r\nat the University of Exeter Medical School in the UK.
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But that doesn’t mean people who lost parents at\r\nyounger ages can’t improve their health, noted Pilling.
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“Current public health advice about being physically\r\nactive, eating well, and not smoking are very relevant, so people can take\r\ntheir health into their own hands,†he told Reuters Health by email.
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Many factors, including genetics, living in the same\r\nenvironment and similar lifestyle choices, play a role in parental longevity\r\nand survival and health in their offspring, said Pilling.
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The concept that parental disease history predicts\r\noffspring disease isn’t new, said Dr. Nisha Parikh, a cardiologist at the\r\nUniversity of California, San Francisco who was not involved with the study.
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“That’s why we routinely ask about parental\r\nhistory,†she said. “But we haven’t paid attention to longevity, and this study\r\nhighlights longevity as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.â€
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The findings should prompt people to pay attention\r\nto the health and aging of their parents, she added.
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“If you have a parent that died at an early age,\r\nthis might be a reason to go to a doctor to have them screen for heart disease\r\nrisks and have those risk factors appropriately treated,†she said.
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SOURCE: bit.ly/2bFCLWs Journal of the American\r\nCollege of Cardiology, online August 23, 2016.
\r\n\r\nLinda\r\nThrasybule – Reuters