Offspring of long-lived parents may also live longer: study

The longer our parents lived, the longer we are likely to live ourselves, a British study said Monday.

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, examined about 186,000 non-adopted participants aged 55 to 73, with deceased parents who participated in U.K. Biobank, a project that collects data on volunteers for health research.

It found that our chances of survival increased by 17 percent for each decade that at least one parent lives beyond the age of 70.

Specially, the risk of dying from heart disease was 20 percent lower for each decade that at least one parent lived beyond the age of 70 years.

In addition, those with longer lived parents also had reduced risk of cancer.

Overall, the eight-year follow-up study found that those with longer lived parents had lower incidence of multiple circulatory conditions including heart disease, heart failure, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and atrial fibrillation.

"To our knowledge, this is the largest study to show that the longer your parents live, the more likely you are to remain healthy in your sixties and seventies," lead author Janice Atkins of the University of Exeter Medical School, said in a statement.

"Asking about parents' longevity could help us predict our likelihood of ageing well and developing conditions such as heart disease, in order to identify patients at higher or lower risk in time to treat them appropriately."