Principal Investigator: Professor David Melzer
Department: Medical School
Institution: University of Exeter
Institution:
University of Exeter, Medical School
Barrack Road, Exeter
EX2 5DW
Summary:
Children of centenarians have lower prevalence of cardiovascular
disease and live longer. Our recent work in the US Health and
Retirement study (n=6500) showed large reductions in overall mortality
in middle aged offspring for each decade their mothers or fathers lived
beyond 65yrs. Estimates were little changed adjusting for classical risk
factors. There was no effect of the parent’s attained age on spouse’s
mortality. We showed parental survival associations with lower cancer
incidence for the first time, but found no association with arthritis in
offspring. We also found evidence of substantially lower rates of
cognitive decline in offspring of long lived parents. These analyses
suggest a strong intrinsic (probably genetic) influence explaining parent
and offspring health advantage during ageing, and might provide a
phenotype for understanding why some people suffer from age related
disorders in their sixties while others remain disease free into their
nineties and beyond.
We aim to estimate the associations between the full range of parental
attained ages and health status (especially ageing traits) in UK Biobank
respondents aged 55yrs and over. Given intergenerational gaps, the 55+
yr olds (estimated 308,000 participants) are more likely to have parents
who have lived to very advanced ages. We aim to study parental
longevity associations with common diseases in offspring, including
diabetes, heart disease, stroke, common age related cancers and
arthritis. We also want to estimate associations with common genetic
variants (SNPs). At present we plan to analyse the baseline (cross-sectional data) plus the
data on all cause mortality already collected. We also request later
access to data on incidence of our diseases of interest, deaths by cause,
plus genetic variant (SNP) data, as these become available.
Our aim is to find new ways of delaying or treating age related disease
and disability, to help people age well.
