ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2017
The Survival of Spouses Marrying Into Longevity-Enriched Families.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Developmental origins of exceptional health and survival: a four-generation family cohort study.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Familial healthy aging and longevity: the role of spouses.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Increasing number of long-lived ancestors marks a decade of healthspan extension and healthier metabolomics profiles.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Aging, longevity, and the role of environmental stressors: a focus on wildfire smoke and air quality.Frontiers in toxicology · 2023Review
- Association of leukocyte telomere length with perceived physical fatigability.Experimental gerontology · 2022Article
- NIA Long Life Family Study: Objectives, Design, and Heritability of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Phenotypes.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2022Article
- Genes and Longevity of Lifespan.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Low Risk for Developing Diabetes Among the Offspring of Individuals With Exceptional Longevity and Their Spouses.Frontiers in clinical diabetes and healthcare · 2022Article
- Longevity Relatives Count score identifies heritable longevity carriers and suggests case improvement in genetic studies.Aging cell · 2020Article
- Longevity defined as top 10% survivors and beyond is transmitted as a quantitative genetic trait.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Longevity Around the Turn of the 20th Century: Life-Long Sustained Survival Advantage for Parents of Today's Nonagenarians.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2018Article
- Assortative Mating by Ethnicity in Longevous Families.Frontiers in genetics · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundStudies 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.
methodsA 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.
resultsDuring 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.
conclusionThe 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.