NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If your parents lived well into their 90s or beyond it may give you at least a few advantages health-wise--but it doesn't necessarily mean that you will age as successfully as your folks, new study finding suggest.

While parental life span appears to be positively associated with an adult child's mental and physical abilities as they age, as well as avoidance of some of the more common chronic diseases, "the effects are small," Dr. Henrik Frederiksen of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and colleagues report in the May issue of the journal Epidemiology.

While many dream of finding the key to living to a ripe old age, the reason why some people lead healthy, active lives well into their 90s and others do not still eludes experts. Certainly genetics play a role, but just how much is not clear.

In the current investigation, Frederiksen's team interviewed people in three age groups: people in their 50s and 60s, people in their 70s and 80s, and people in their 90s or older. In all, about 9,000 men and women participated--each answering questions about their health status, the age of their parents when they died and taking simple tests that measured physical strength and mental ability, the report indicates.

"We found that at older ages parental life span is positively associated with physical and (mental) functioning and avoidance of some of the...important diseases (like heart disease and diabetes)," Frederiksen and colleagues report.

For example, for every additional decade parents lived, the adult children had a slightly stronger grip and scored higher on tests of cognition, a catch-all term for learning and memory.

Also, for every extra 10 years the parents were alive, there was a drop in the risk of the adult offsprings' chances of having diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart failure, stroke or poor health in general. However, almost all of those effects were seen in the offspring over 70, and not those who were middle aged, or in the "oldest old" group.

The authors conclude that the "overall effects are small in absolute terms and are seen only among the elderly, but not among the middle-aged or the oldest old."

SOURCE: Epidemiology 2002;13:334-339.

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