Browsing by Author "Pedersen, Jacob K"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Cancer and longevity--is there a trade-off? A study of cooccurrence in Danish twin pairs born 1900-1918.
    (J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci, 2012-05) Christensen, Kaare; Pedersen, Jacob K; Hjelmborg, Jacob VB; Vaupel, James W; Stevnsner, Tinna; Holm, Niels V; Skytthe, Axel
    BACKGROUND: Animal models and a few human studies have suggested a complex interaction between cancer risk and longevity indicating a trade-off where low cancer risk is associated with accelerating aging phenotypes and, vice versa, that longevity potential comes with the cost of increased cancer risk. This hypothesis predicts that longevity in one twin is associated with increased cancer risk in the cotwin. METHODS: A total of 4,354 twin pairs born 1900-1918 in Denmark were followed for mortality in the Danish Civil Registration System through 2008 and for cancer incidence in the period 1943-2008 through the Danish Cancer Registry. RESULTS: The 8,139 twins who provided risk time for cancer occurrence entered the study between ages 24 and 43 (mean 33 years), and each participant was followed up to death, emigration, or at least 90 years of age. The total follow-up time was 353,410 person-years and, 2,524 cancers were diagnosed. A negative association between age at death of a twin and cancer incidence in the cotwin was found in the overall analyses as well as in the subanalysis stratified on sex, zygosity, and random selection of one twin from each twin pair. CONCLUSIONS: This study did not find evidence of a cancer-longevity trade-off in humans. On the contrary, it suggested that longevity in one twin is associated with lower cancer incidence in the cotwin, indicating familial factors associated with both low cancer occurrence and longevity.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Low tobacco-related cancer incidence in offspring of long-lived siblings: a comparison with Danish national cancer registry data.
    (Ann Epidemiol, 2015-08) Pedersen, Jacob K; Skytthe, Axel; McGue, Matt; Honig, Lawrence S; Franceschi, Claudio; Kirkwood, Thomas BL; Passarino, Giuseppe; Slagboom, P Eline; Vaupel, James W; Christensen, Kaare
    PURPOSE: Familial clustering of longevity is well documented and includes both genetic and other familial factors, but the specific underlying mechanisms are largely unknown. We examined whether low incidence of specific cancers is a mechanism for familial clustering of longevity. METHODS: The study population of individuals from longevity-enriched families consisted of 3267 offspring from 610 Danish long-lived families defined by two siblings attaining an age of 90 years or more. The offspring of the long-lived siblings were followed from 1968 to 2009. Using high-quality registry data, observed numbers of cancers were compared with expected numbers based on gender-, calendar period-, and age-specific incidence rates in the general population. RESULTS: During the 41-year-follow-up period, a total of 423 cancers occurred in 397 individuals. The standardized incidence ratios (95% confidence interval) for offspring of long-lived individuals were 0.78 (0.70-0.86) for overall cancer; 0.66 (0.56-0.77) for tobacco-related cancer; 0.34 (0.22-0.51) for lung cancer; 0.88 (0.71-1.10) for breast cancer; 0.91 (0.62-1.34) for colon cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The low incidence of tobacco-related cancers in long-lived families compared with non-tobacco-related cancers suggests that health behavior plays a central role in lower early cancer incidence in offspring of long-lived siblings in Denmark.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Survival of Spouses Marrying Into Longevity-Enriched Families.
    (J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci, 2017-01) Pedersen, Jacob K; Elo, Irma T; Schupf, Nicole; Perls, Thomas T; Stallard, Eric; Yashin, Anatoliy I; Christensen, Kaare
    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.