How does the length of parents’ lifespan relate to health and aging in their children?

Anna Thalén and Anders Ledberg have published two studies examining associations between parental age at death and a number of outcomes in the offspring. Both studies draw upon the known inheritance of lifespans and uses parental age at death as a proxy for aging-rates in the offspring.

Parental and offspring lifespans

The first study, titled “Consequences of heterogeneity in aging: parental age at death predicts midlife all-cause mortality and hospitalization in a Swedish national birth cohort” examines how the lifespan of parents influence mortality and health outcomes of their offspring.

Highlights

Longer parental lifespan was consistently linked to reduced risk of all-cause mortality and hospitalization for the 10 most common disease categories in the birth cohort.

Each additional decade of parental survival decreased the risk of offspring all-cause mortality by 22% and risks of hospitalizations by 9-20%.

Differences in risk were mostly evident from before the age of 50 and persisted throughout the follow-up.

Publication details

Thalén, A., & Ledberg, A. (2024). Consequences of heterogeneity in aging: parental age at death predicts midlife all-cause mortality and hospitalization in a Swedish national birth cohort. BMC Geriatrics, 24, 207. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-024-04786-9

Trade-off between reproduction and lifespan

The second study titled “Parental age at death is associated with age at first birth in offspring” aims to investigate the trade-off between reproduction and lifespan, as proposed by evolutionary theories of aging, by studying how age at first birth depends on parental age at death.

Highlights

Longer parental lifespans were consistently associated with older age at first births, both in men and women, providing support for a trade-off between aging and reproduction.

Age at first birth was also dependent on parental occupational class, education, and income.

Publication details

Thalén, A., & Ledberg, A. (2024). Parental age at death is associated with age at first birth in offspring. Experimental Gerontology, 189, 112396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2024.112396

Authors