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Children of centenarians live longer and develop some diseases later, study finds
🇰🇷 South Korea /Health & Science

Children of centenarians live longer and develop some diseases later, study finds

From Dong-A Ilbo · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Context piece
  • People with at least one parent who lived to 100 had a 42% lower mortality risk than comparable participants, along with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
  • Their deaths occurred about three years later on average, and hypertension appeared more than five years later than among people whose parents died earlier.
  • The protective pattern largely persisted after researchers accounted for lifestyle factors, but the study found no clear difference in cancer risk.

People whose parents lived to at least 100 may inherit more than the possibility of a long life. A large study found that they also tended to remain free of some age-related diseases for longer.

Compared with people whose parents had died by age 85 or less, centenarians’ children had a 42% lower risk of death at the same age. Their risks of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure were 33% and 32% lower, respectively. They died about three years later on average, while hypertension developed more than five years later.

This supports the fact that exceptional longevity runs in families

— Eric ReimanThe study’s first author commented on the consistent findings across three long-term studies.

Most of these advantages remained after the researchers accounted for exercise, diet, smoking and alcohol use. The findings suggest that families with exceptional longevity may carry genetic or biological factors that delay diseases associated with aging, rather than simply extending lifespan.

The pattern did not apply equally to every illness. Researchers found no clear difference in cancer risk between centenarians’ children and the comparison group. Evidence for a lower stroke risk also appeared only in some studies, without a consistent protective effect.

Healthy lifestyle habits are important for everyone

— Eric ReimanReiman stressed that the findings do not reduce the importance of healthy behavior.

The researchers analyzed long-term data from three studies: New York’s LonGenity project and the UK Biobank, each with 16 years of data, and the New England Centenarian Study, which contributed 29 years of data. The analysis compared 2,319 people with at least one centenarian parent with 2,703 controls.

Eric Reiman of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the paper’s first author, said the consistency across the three different studies was especially notable. “This supports the fact that exceptional longevity runs in families,” he said. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, was not designed to identify specific genetic traits, but the researchers said centenarian families could help reveal biological mechanisms of healthy aging and inform treatments that imitate them.

People who live beyond 100 provide very important clues for understanding what healthy aging looks like

— Sofiya MilmanThe study leader described the value of researching exceptionally long-lived families.
About this summary

Originally published by Dong-A Ilbo in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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