The Survival of Spouses Marrying Into Longevity-Enriched Families

Jacob Krabbe Pedersen · Irma T. Elo · Nicole Schupf · Thomas T. Perls · Eric Stallard · Anatoliy I. Yashin +1 more

24 citations0/0 files storedThe Journals of Gerontology Series A

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Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management Genetic Associations and Epidemiology Health disparities and outcomes

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Studies of longevity-enriched families are an important tool to gain insight into the mechanisms of exceptionally long and healthy lives. In the Long Life Family Study, the spouses of the members of the longevity-enriched families are often used as a control group. These spouses could be expected to have better health than the background population due to shared family environment with the longevity-enriched family members and due to assortative mating. METHODS: A Danish cohort study of 5,363 offspring of long-lived siblings, born 1917-1982, and 4,498 "first spouses" of these offspring. For each offspring and spouse, 10 controls were drawn from a 5% random sample of the Danish population matched on birth year and sex. Mortality was assessed for ages 20-69 years during 1968-2013 based on prospectively collected registry data. RESULTS: During the 45-year follow-up period, 437 offspring deaths and 502 offspring spouse deaths were observed. Compared with the background population, the hazard ratio for male offspring was 0.44 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.38-0.50) and for female offspring it was 0.57 (95% CI: 0.49-0.66). For male spouses, the hazard ratio was 0.66 (95% CI: 0.59-0.74), whereas for female spouses it was 0.64 (95% CI: 0.54-0.76). Sensitivity analyses in restricted samples gave similar results. CONCLUSION: The mortality for ages 20-69 years of spouses marrying into longevity-enriched families is substantially lower than the mortality in the background population, although long-lived siblings participation bias may have contributed to the difference. This finding has implications for the use of spouses as controls in healthy aging and longevity studies, as environmental and/or genetic overmatching may occur.

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1997Substantial Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities in Twins 80 or More Years Old 2007Health concordance within couples: A systematic review 2011The Protective Effect of Marriage for Survival: A Review and Update 2007Spousal Concordance in Health Behavior Change 2011Marital status and colon cancer outcomes in US Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registries: Does marriage affect cancer survival by gender and stage?2009Heading South 2009A Family Longevity Selection Score: Ranking Sibships by Their Longevity, Size, and Availability for Study 2012Mending Broken Hearts

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