U25005 An Age-Old Advantage. Healthy aging in two centuries of Swedish and Dutch long-lived families

The aim of the project is to study long-lived families across multiple generations to understand the factors that contribute to healthy aging in a changing disease environment. The project examines how socioeconomic resources, lifestyle, and hereditary resilience influence the likelihood of living a long and healthy life. Using historical data, we identify families with a longevity advantage and track their development over time—from periods of high epidemic mortality to the rise of lifestyle-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The project has three main questions: 1. How disease trajectories differ for members of long-lived families compared to the general population. 2. How their immunological resilience differs from that of the general population. 3. How the role of socioeconomic status and lifestyle-related diseases in healthy aging has changed over time.