Child of parents who live long has lower rate of heart ills

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The children of parents who live to a ripe old age may face a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease when they themselves reach middle age, according to a study published Monday.

Individuals with at least one parent who survived to age 85 or beyond would be at less risk of heart attack or stroke, said researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine.

The study, published in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 1,697 men and women, with an average age of 40, whose parents lived to 85 years and beyond, or died before January 1, 2005, and compared both.

Their parents had also participated in a 1948 study involving residents of Framingham, a small town northeast of Massachusetts that has been the subject of significant studies cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The researchers took into account their levels of education, body mass, smoking habits, blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels.

They found that individuals whose parents both died before age 85 scored the worse in cardiovascular disease risk assessments. Those whose parents both lived to age 85 or beyond scored better.

"Our findings suggest that individuals with long-lived parents have more advantageous cardiovascular risk profiles in middle age compared with those whose parents died younger and that the risk factor advantage persists over time," they said.

Previous research found that children of centenarians on average lived longer, and were less likely to suffer from heart disease, hypertension and diabetes until much later in life.

But this study is the first to make a specific link between parents' age and risk of heart disease, the researchers said.