Longevity Linked to Heart Disease Protection

Older adults whose parents lived 100 years or longer are healthier than others their age and have dramatically lower risks of heart attack, stroke, diabetes or dying from any other cause, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine report in a new study.
Still, the healthy seniors appeared to be just as susceptible as their peers to other illnesses, including hypertension, heart arrhythmias, dementia, cancer, depression, bone fractures, glaucoma, macular degeneration, osteoporosis and thyroid disease, according to the study, which appeared in The Journal of The American Geriatrics Society.
The finding lends credence to the idea that a predisposition to a long lifespan may be inherited, the investigators said, and suggests that it may be due in large part to protection from cardiovascular disease.

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