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Ingrid van Dijk . Photo

Ingrid van Dijk

Associate senior lecturer

Ingrid van Dijk . Photo

Increasing number of long-lived ancestors marks a decade of healthspan extension and healthier metabolomics profiles

Author

  • Niels van den Berg
  • Mar Rodríguez-Girondo
  • Ingrid Kirsten van Dijk
  • P. Eline Slagboom
  • Marian Beekman

Summary, in English

Globally, the lifespan of populations increases but the healthspan is lagging behind. Previous research showed that survival into extreme ages (longevity) clusters in families as illustrated by the increasing lifespan of study participants with each additional long-lived family member. Here we investigate whether the healthspan in such families follows a similar quantitative pattern using three-generational data from two databases, LLS (Netherlands), and SEDD (Sweden). We study healthspan in 2143 families containing index persons with 26 follow-up years and two ancestral generations, comprising 17,539 persons. Our results provide strong evidence that an increasing number of long-lived ancestors associates with up to a decade of healthspan extension. Further evidence indicates that members of long-lived families have a delayed onset of medication use, multimorbidity and, in mid-life, healthier metabolomic profiles than their partners. We conclude that both lifespan and healthspan are quantitatively linked to ancestral longevity, making family data invaluable to identify protective mechanisms of multimorbidity.

Department/s

  • Centre for Economic Demography
  • Department of Economic History

Publishing year

2023-07-27

Language

English

Publication/Series

Nature Communications

Volume

14

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Topic

  • Economic History

Keywords

  • Aging
  • Healty lifespan
  • Family shared survival
  • Family shared health
  • Historical demography

Status

Published

Project

  • Landskrona Population Study
  • An Age-Old Advantage? Healthy aging in two centuries of Swedish and Dutch long-lived families (1813-2021). Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2041-1723