Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh found that people who married into long-lived families have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
They found that the children of exceptionally long-lived parents, as well as their spouses, have a similarly reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes compared to the general population.
The research is published in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare and was conducted by Prof Iva Miljkovic et al.
In the study, the team found that children born in exceptionally long-lived families differ from peers in their blood levels of biomarkers affecting the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Their genetic and epigenetic make-up help their body to remain responsive to insulin, even in old age.
Their spouses—typically not born to exceptionally long-lived parents—tend to share these health- and lifespan-boosting biomarker levels.
This implies that such family-specific beneficial biomarker levels aren’t always inherited—you might also develop them if married to the right partner.
Traits that seemed to protect against developing diabetes II included low BMI, low waist circumference, high levels of HDL cholesterol and the hormones adiponectin and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in the blood, and low levels of triglycerides, insulin-like growth factor 1, and pro-inflammatory interleukin 6 (IL-6) in the blood.
The team found that pro-inflammatory and growth-factor-signaling biomarkers seem to have stronger positive and negative effects on the risk of diabetes in the spouses of offspring of exceptional survivors than in those offspring themselves.
This suggests that different biological risk factors affect this risk in the two groups.
Does this mean that spouses grow to resemble each other in their biomarker blood levels simply by sharing a household and lifestyle, irrespective of their genetic background in early life? Not necessarily always.
The team says it’s also possible that people unconsciously tend to pick their partners through so-called “assortative mating”—that is, tending to match their phenotypes and the underlying genotypes. Including those that affect diabetes risk and longevity.
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