Longevity Around the Turn of the 20th Century: Life-Long Sustained Survival Advantage for Parents of Today's Nonagenarians.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Retrospective family-based cohort study analyzing genealogical mortality data.
PubMed 29596573 · doi:10.1093/gerona/gly049
What was done
The authors examined the familial transmission of longevity in the Leiden Longevity Study, analyzing 944 longevous sibling participants, 842 parents, 2,302 siblings, and 809 spouses (total N = 4,897). Family longevity scores were calculated to assess maternal versus paternal transmission patterns. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were estimated to compare longevous siblings with longevous singletons, and lifetime SMRs (L-SMRs) were calculated to compare the parents of longevous siblings against the general Dutch population.
What was found
Sibships with long-lived mothers and non-long-lived fathers had 0.41 fewer observed deaths (p = .024) than sibships with long-lived fathers and non-long-lived mothers, and 0.48 fewer observed deaths (p = .008) than sibships with both parents non-long-lived. Longevous sibling participants had 18.6 percent fewer deaths compared with matched singletons. Parents of longevous siblings exhibited a life-long sustained survival advantage compared to the general population, with L-SMRs of 0.510 and 0.688.
Why it matters
The findings indicate that familial longevity is preferentially inherited through maternal lineage and is characterized by a lifelong reduction in mortality risk across the lifespan rather than an advantage restricted strictly to old age.
Limits
The study is restricted to a single Dutch genealogical cohort, which may limit generalizability to other geographic or ethnic populations. Specific environmental, lifestyle, and socioeconomic confounders that could influence historical survival patterns across generations were not detailed in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports The heritability of human longevity shows stronger maternal transmission than paternal transmission.