Longer life if mum or dad were 85 plus

People whose parents lived to be 85 or over may have the best chance of themselves living to a ripe old age.

Dr Dellara F. Terry of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues studied 1,697 members of the Framingham Heart Study, a large, multigenerational study of risk factors for cardiovascular and other chronic diseases that began in 1948 among residents of Framingham, Massachusetts. All of the individuals included in this analysis had parents who also participated in the study and either lived to be age 85 or older or died before 1 January, 2005.

The participants were examined between 1971 and 1975, when they were all age 30 or older – with an average age of 40. Information recorded included education level, smoking habits, blood pressure, blood cholesterol levels, body mass index and Framingham Risk Score, a combined measure of cardiovascular disease risk. Between 1983 and 1987, 1,319 of the participants were examined again, so the researchers could analyse how these variables changed over time.

In the initial group of 1,697 offspring, 11% had two parents who survived to age 85 or older, 47% had one parent who lived to that age and 42% had two parents who died before age 85. Framingham Risk Score was worst, on average, in individuals whose parents had both died before age 85 and best among those whose parents had both lived to 85 years or older.

The study’s authors wrote that “the percentage of those individuals with optimal or normal blood pressure, total/high-density lipoprotein (‘good’) cholesterol ratio, and low Framingham Risk Score was highest in those with both parents surviving to 85 years or older.

“Our findings suggest that individuals with long-lived parents have more advantageous cardiovascular risk profiles in middle age compared with those whose parents died younger and that the risk factor advantage persists over time.”