Survival advantage of siblings and spouses of centenarians in 20th-century Quebec

Abstract

Longevity runs in families, either through genetic or environmental influences. Using Quebec civil registration and historical Canadian censuses, we compared the longevity of siblings and spouses of 806 centenarians to a group of controls, all born in Quebec at the turn of the 20th century. Our results show that siblings of centenarians, who share half of their genes and a common childhood environment, lived 3-4 years longer than their birth cohort. However, husbands and wives of centenarians lived 4 and 2.5 years longer than their counterparts of the same sex, respectively, suggesting that longevity is also modulated by shared environment in adulthood.