Research Paper Volume 9, Issue 10 pp 2223—2234
Thyroid status and mortality in nonagenarians from long-lived families and the general population
- 1 Department of Internal Medicine, section of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, 2300 RC, the Netherlands
- 2 2Department of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, section of Molecular Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, 2300 RC, the Netherlands
- 3 Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, 2300 RC, the Netherlands
- 4 Department of Public Health and Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Hovedstaden,, 1014, Denmark
Received: August 28, 2017 Accepted: October 15, 2017 Published: October 25, 2017
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101310How to Cite
Copyright: van Vliet et al. This is an openâaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The relationship between thyroid status and longevity has been investigated extensively. However, data on thyroid status and survival in old age is scarce. In this study we investigated associations of different parameters of thyroid status with mortality in nonagenarians, and whether these associations were different in nonagenarians from long-lived families than in nonagenarians from the general population. In total, 805 nonagenarians from the Leiden Longevity Study and 259 nonagenarians from the Leiden 85-plus Study were followed up to collect mortality data. At baseline, levels of thyrotropin (TSH), free thyroxine (fT4) and free triiodothyronine (fT3) were measured. In nonagenarians from long-lived families and from the general population, associations between thyroid parameters and mortality were similar. We found no interaction between study population and parameters of thyroid status on mortality (P-values>0.70). The results from both studies were combined to derive generalizable associations. Hazard ratios (HRs) for the highest compared to lowest tertiles were determined, resulting in TSH HR 0.91 (P=0.25), fT4 HR 1.22 (P=0.02), fT3 HR 0.74 (P=1.31e-4), and fT3/fT4 HR 0.66 (P=5.64e-7). In conclusion, higher fT3/fT4 ratios, higher levels of fT3, and lower levels of fT4 were associated with lower mortality rate in nonagenarians and independent of familial longevity status.