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

Niels Berg (), Mar Rodríguez-Girondo, Ingrid K. Dijk, P. Eline Slagboom and Marian Beekman
Additional contact information
Niels Berg: Leiden University Medical Center
Mar Rodríguez-Girondo: Leiden University Medical Center
Ingrid K. Dijk: Lund University
P. Eline Slagboom: Leiden University Medical Center
Marian Beekman: Leiden University Medical Center

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40245-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-40245-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40245-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().