Parental longevity and 7-year changes in blood pressures in adult offspring

In this report, we examined the cross-sectional and the 7-year longitudinal changes in blood pressures in adult offspring according to parental longevity. A population of volunteers free of symptomatic cardiovascular diseases who participated to the Supplementation en Vitamines et en Minéraux Antioxydants (SUVIMAX) Vascular Study (mean age 52.3 years; 48.3% women) were examined at baseline and 7 years later. Paternal (n=994) and maternal (n=896) longevity were analyzed separately. The prevalence of hypertension at baseline in subjects whose father died at <65 years of age, in those whose fathers were alive by age 65 but died by 80 years of age, and in those whose fathers were alive by age 80 was respectively 34.9%, 28.5%, and 20.2% (P<0.001). The means of systolic blood pressure in the 3 groups of paternal longevity were respectively 128.4 (+/-16.0), 125.3 (+/-14.2), and 123.6 (+/-14.4) mm Hg (P<0.001). During the follow-up, the mean systolic blood pressure increases in the 3 groups of paternal longevity were respectively 5.3 (+/-17.0), 4.2 (+/-14.0), and 1.6 (+/-13.2) mm Hg (P<0.001). In subjects without hypertension at baseline, hypertension occurred during the follow-up in 26.6%, 17.7%, and 15.3% (P<0.009), respectively. Multivariate analyses adjusted for baseline or changes in cardiovascular risk factors did not modify these results. In contrast, there was no relationship between maternal longevity and blood pressure measurements in either cross-sectional or longitudinal analyses. This study suggests that paternal premature death was associated with accelerated progression of systolic blood pressure and higher occurrence of hypertension in offspring. These results indicate that there are dynamic and continuous processes linking paternal longevity to blood pressure in adults.