Heart-healthy folks apt to have long-lived parents

NEW YORK, Mar 13 (Reuters) Children whose parents enjoyed a long life, living well into their 80s, seem to have healthier hearts in middle age compared with children whose parents did not live this long. Moreover, the heart advantage persists over time, which should help them follow in their parents' footsteps.

US researchers found that the presence, and progression over 12 years, of several heart disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure, was lower among middle-aged offspring with ''long-lived'' parents compared with people whose parents did not live into very old age.

The findings come from the Framingham Heart Study, a multigenerational study of risk factors for heart disease and other chronic diseases that began in 1948 among residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.

Among 1697 children of Framingham study participants, 188 had both parents live to age 85 or older; 804 had one parent survive to age 85 or older; and 704 had neither parent live this long, Dr. Dellara F Terry from Boston University and colleagues report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The worst Framingham Risk Scores -- a measure of heart disease risk that uses age, smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure to estimate a person's odds of suffering a heart attack -- were found in children whose parents had both died before age 85. The best risk scores were found among children whose parents had both lived to age 85 or older.

Among a subset of 1,319 offspring followed long-term, those with long-lived parents maintained their ''advantageous cardiovascular risk profiles.'' ''There are well established genetic contributions to each of the risk factors that we have examined that may partially explain the reduced risk factors for those with long-lived parents,'' the authors note.

''A greater understanding of the genetics of cardiovascular risk factors and longevity may lead to advances in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the future,'' Dr. Terry commented to Reuters Health.

Dr Clyde B. Schechter adds in an editorial: ''We are only beginning to learn about the determinants of exceptional longevity.

Several fruitful areas are already the subject of active research, but much more remains to be done.'' ''Progress in this area is not just of intrinsic interest,'' Schechter from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York writes, ''it also has the potential to promote discoveries that will improve the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and other age-related diseases.'' REUTERS SB BST1035