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Dellara F. Terry, MD, MPH; Jane C. Evans, DSc; Michael J. Pencina, PhD; Joanne M. Murabito, MD, ScM; Ramachandran S. Vasan, MD; Philip A. Wolf, MD; Margaret Kelly-Hayes, EdD, RN; Daniel Levy, MD; Ralph B. D’Agostino Sr, PhD; Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(5):438-444.

Background  Prior research has suggested that delay or avoidance of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease risk factors plays an important role in longevity.

Methods  We studied 1697 Framingham Heart Study (FHS) offspring members 30 years or older, whose parents (1) participated in the original FHS cohort and (2) achieved age 85 years or died before January 1, 2005. Offspring participants (mean ± SD age, 40 ± 7 years; 51% women) were grouped according to whether neither (n = 705), one (n = 804), or both parents (n = 188) survived to 85 years or older. We examined offspring risk factors at examination cycle 1 (1971-1975) including age, sex, education, cigarette smoking, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, total–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio, body mass index, and Framingham Risk Score. Participants returning for examination cycle 3 (1983-1987; n = 1319) were eligible for inclusion in longitudinal analyses evaluating risk factor progression from baseline to a higher follow-up risk category.

Results  For all factors studied, except body mass index, we observed statistically significant linear trends for lower offspring examination 1 risk factor levels with increasing parental survival category. The mean Framingham Risk Score was most favorable in offspring with both parents surviving to 85 years or older and was progressively worse in those with one or no long-lived parent (0.55, 1.08, and 1.71, respectively; P value for trend, <.001). Longitudinally, offspring of parents who lived longer had lower risk of blood pressure and Framingham Risk Score progression.

Conclusions  Our findings suggest that individuals with long-lived parents have advantageous cardiovascular risk profiles in middle age compared with those whose parents died younger. The risk factor advantage persists over time.

Author Affiliations: Framingham Heart Study of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and Boston University School of Medicine; Sections of Geriatrics (Dr Terry), Preventive Medicine (Drs Murabito, Vasan, Levy, D’Agostino, and Benjamin), General Internal Medicine (Dr Murabito), and Cardiology (Drs Levy, Vasan, and Benjamin), Department of Medicine, and Department of Neurology (Drs Evans, Wolf, and Kelly-Hayes), Boston University School of Medicine, and Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Drs Pencina and D’Agostino), Boston University, Boston, Mass; and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Dr Levy), Bethesda, Md.

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