The longer our parents live or have lived, the more likely it is that we too will be long-lived and that we will reach 60 or 70 years in good health , especially with regard to a number of cardiovascular diseases and some types of tumors, according to research carried out by an international group of scientists funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC).
The macro-study, recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology , led by the University of Exeter (England) and in which 186,000 people between the ages of 53 and 73 participated over a period of up to eight years, considers that our chances of survival increase by 17% for every decade that at least one of our parents lives beyond 70 years .
It is the first time that evidence has been found that knowing at what age a person’s parents died could help predict their risk of suffering cardiovascular disease in the future, as well as different aspects of heart and circulatory health, which that opens up important possibilities when it comes to developing preventive medicine aimed at preventing such ailments from occurring.
According to this research, those with the longest-lived parents suffered fewer cases of circulatory diseases, including cardiovascular ailments, heart failure, stroke, hypertension, high cholesterol levels and atrial fibrillation. In fact, the risk of dying from a heart problem dropped by 20% for every decade that at least one parent was over the age of 70. It also affected cancer cases : a greater longevity of the parents reduced the risks of getting it by 7%.
Although risk factors such as smoking, high alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and obesity are determinants for life expectancy, the number of years lived by the person’s parents continued to serve as a predictive element in what it concerns the chances of suffering a disease.
Dr Janice Atkins, a researcher at the University of Exeter School of Medicine and the lead author of the article, explained that this is the largest study ever done to show that the longer your parents live, the more likely you are to arrive in a good health at 60 or 70 .
“Asking about the longevity of parents could help us predict our chances of aging well and developing conditions such as heart disease in order to identify patients with higher or lower risk of suffering them and thus be able to treat them in a timely manner. adequate “.
