Long-lived children have healthy hearts until old age

An international team of researchers led by Professor David Melzer from the University of Exeter has found that the age at which a person's parents died can be used to predict not only the risk of developing heart disease, but also many other aspects of the state of the cardiovascular system.

As part of the study, the authors used data on the health status of 186,000 people aged 55 to 73 years who were monitored for a period of up to 8 years. Analysis of the collected data showed that people whose parents lived to the most advanced years were less likely to suffer from various pathologies of the circulatory system, including heart failure and other heart diseases, stroke, hypertension, high cholesterol levels in the blood and atrial fibrillation. For example, the risk of death from heart disease was 20% lower for every ten years lived by at least one parent after the age of 70. In addition, people whose parents died at a very old age were less likely to have cancer. Having one long-lived parent reduced the risk of developing cancer by 7% throughout the follow-up period.

Despite the fact that factors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, low physical activity and obesity made a significant contribution to the risk of morbidity and mortality, the life expectancy of parents remained a strong prognostic factor even after adjusting for these parameters.

The authors were prompted to conduct this study by the results of earlier work that demonstrated the existence of a relationship between the longevity of parents and the risk of developing heart disease in their children. In this work, we analyzed data on 75,000 people registered with the UK Biobank, according to which children of long-lived parents are more likely to have protective gene variants associated with coronary heart disease, systolic blood pressure, body mass index, cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood, type I diabetes mellitus and the disease Alzheimer's.

Experts note that aging is the most important risk factor for common chronic diseases, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Apparently, the mechanisms of development of these conditions are intertwined with the mechanisms of the aging process, therefore, interventions aimed at slowing down aging can also delay the development of these diseases and disability, increasing the number of years a person lives in good health.

Article by Janice L Atkins et al. Longer-lived parents and cardiovascular outcomes: 8 year follow up in 186,000 UK Biobank participants published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru according to the University of Exeter: Long-lived parents could mean a healthier heart into your seventies.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  22.08.2016