A U.S. study has said that people whose parents live past 80 years of age are more likely to avoid high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and other heart-disease risk factors.
The study involved the examination of 1,607 offspring, who were 30 years and older, of parents from the Framingham Heart Study. The Framingham Heart Study is a program of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
The study on completion was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study found that the group of study participants whose parents survived past 85 years of age, had fewer participants with high blood pressure or who smoked, compared with those groups in which one or both parents had died.
The children of parents who lived past 85 years of age had greatly lower levels of blood pressure and blood cholesterol at middle age.
However, parental longevity did not appear to affect body mass index. Body mass index is a common measure of body fat based on a person’s weight and height.