Grandchildren of Long-Lived Families Died Less as Infants
Graded Preliminary — danish registry records on more than 60,000 children with matched comparison groups; education and smoking were coarsely recorded, and the design cannot show cause.
- Design
- Retrospective cohort study
- Participants
- 61,635
- Duration
- 12 months
- Funding
- US National Institute on Aging (NIH)
Grandchildren of families with very long-lived siblings died in their first year about half as often as matched children.
In some families, an unusual number of members reach very old age. Danish registry data now suggest the pattern shows up at the very start of life. Grandchildren of such families died during their first year about half as often as comparable children from the general population.
Researchers drew on records from 659 Danish families in which at least two siblings had lived to 88 or older. They compared 5,637 grandchildren and 14,908 great-grandchildren with 41,090 children from the general population, matched on birth year and other features. Among the grandchildren, premature birth, low birth weight for gestational age and breathing problems after birth were also less common. Among the great-grandchildren, the advantage was weaker and less consistent, and no clear difference in infant deaths was detected. It made no difference whether the mother or the father came from the long-lived family.
Parents in both generations more often had higher education, and mothers smoked less. The advantage held even after accounting for this. But these details were coarse: smoking was recorded only as yes or no. Why the advantage fades across generations is not answered here.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure: The authors declare no competing interests.
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