Children of Centenarians Have a 42% Lower Risk of Death, Study Finds

People with a parent who lived to 100 are far less likely to die at any given age than those whose parents had shorter lives, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Adults with at least one centenarian parent had a 42% lower risk of death, a 33% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and a 32% lower risk of hypertension (high blood pressure) than people whose parents did not reach 100. Many outcomes also arrived later in life, suggesting the protection extends beyond survival alone.

The research was led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Boston University, and Tufts Medical Center, who combined data from three long-running projects: Einstein's LonGenity study, the New England Centenarian Study (NECS) at Boston University, and the UK Biobank. The analysis covered 2,319 adults with at least one centenarian parent and 2,703 controls, whose parents had lived to 85 or younger, or who were spouses of centenarians' offspring. LonGenity and the UK Biobank tracked participants for 16 years, and NECS for 29 years.

Centenarians' children died about three years later on average and developed hypertension about five years later than the comparison group. These advantages remained consistent after accounting for smoking, alcohol use, exercise, diet, education, and socioeconomic status, suggesting that health behaviors and social circumstances alone do not completely explain why exceptional longevity runs in families. "We wanted to know whether they pass their good health and longevity down to their children—and, if so, whether those advantages can be explained by healthy habits or whether something more fundamental, like genetics, is at work," said senior author Sofiya Milman, M.D., professor of medicine and genetics at Einstein.

The protection was not equal across every disease. Stroke risk was lower only in the LonGenity and NECS groups, not consistently across all three studies, and cancer risk was not reduced among centenarians' offspring at all — a result that matches some earlier research.