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Content archived on 2022-12-23

The mechanisms of human longevity: an association of parental characteristics and longevity of their children

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This study analysed the most reliable data - genealogical records on longevity in European royal and noble families for 18-20th centuries from the German edition of the "Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels" (the 'New Gotha Almanac'). Data on human longevity for more than 700 different European royal and noble families was collected, computerised and analysed. As a result, the genealogical longevity database was created containing more than 12000 records for persons born in 19th century and survived by adult age (30 years). It was found that daughters born to old fathers lose about 4.4 years of their life and these losses are statistically highly significant (p 0.01), while sons are not significantly affected. This finding is in accord with the mutation theory of ageing since paternal age at reproduction is considered to be the main factor determining human spontaneous mutation rate. This effect remained valid when other confounding factors were taken into account including maternal age at reproduction, paternal and maternal ages at death and sex-specific mean cohort life span (control for cohort and secular trends and fluctuations). This study did not reveal any significant effect of maternal age at reproduction on longevity of adult offspring, but further studies in this direction are planned. The study of longevity data for different ranges of paternal age at reproduction showed that for the subgroup of younger fathers (35-45 years) the mean loss of daughters' life span is very small and statistically insignificant, while for older fathers (45-55 years) this loss is particularly high and statistically significant. It turned out that females live longer than males when fathers are young, while in the case of old fathers sex differences are very small and statistically insignificant. Much higher estimates for the familial component of human longevity were observed when data was controlled for parental age at reproduction. The longevity of daughters born to long-lived fathers (70 years and above) was 67.2 years while daughters born by short-lived fathers (30-49 years) lived 64.7 years. This difference of 2.5 years is consistent with previous observations of other authors. After controlling for father's reproductive age (reproduction at young age of 20-29 years only) daughters' longevity becomes equal to 69.4 years in the case of long-lived fathers and 63.0 years in the case of short-lived fathers. This difference of 6.4 years is much higher than any other previous estimates made before for adults at age 30 (when data was not controlled for parental age at reproduction). The results indicate that familial (and perhaps genetic) components of human longevity are probably underestimated and deserve re-examination in future studies. At the beginning of life, the impact of age of father on infant and foetal mortality was also studied using vital registration data of live births and infant deaths for Hungary (1984-1988) and Belgium (1986- 1990), including late foetal deaths for the latter. It was found that infant mortality rates increase when the age of father is above 35 controlling for the age of mother and for other covariates such as education and activity of the parents, previous foetal deaths, induced abortions or live births in the reproductive life of the mother. The results possibly indicate a child frailty dependent upon the age of father at conception.

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