Parental and offspring life spans are modestly associated and a transmission of disease risk from parents to offspring has been proposed as a possible explanation. Using birth cohort data consisting of 86 168 offspring and their parents, the aim of this explorative study was to quantify and describe the association between parental age-at-death and risk of disease in offspring over a 33-year follow-up period. Hospitalizations due to diseases of the circulatory, musculoskeletal, and digestive systems, as well as mental and behavioural disorders and neoplasms were studied using standard survival analysis methods. Increased parental age-at-death was clearly associated with lower hazard rates for all disease outcomes except for neoplasms. Offspring to short-lived parents had a 59% higher hazard rate (HR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.52 – 1.67, p<0.00) for hospitalization due to circulatory diseases compared to offspring of long-lived parents. For all disease outcomes except for neoplasms, there was a strong gradient in the offspring’s hazard rates based on parental age-at-death. Hazard rates were only minimally reduced when adjusting for parental SEI and parental household income. The results support a disease-mediated pathway linking parental age-at-death to disease risk in offspring across a wide range of disease outcomes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-206439 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Thalén, Anna |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för folkhälsovetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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