A mother or father's lifespan has a direct bearing on the chances of their children reaching a ripe old age, research has shown.

For every decade at least one parent lives from the age of 70 onwards, the likelihood of dying prematurely is reduced by 16%-17%, a large British study found.

Having longer lived parents was also associated with much lower rates of heart conditions and protection against some cancers.

Scientists analysed data on the health of 186,000 people aged 55 to 73 over a period of up to eight years. They found that people with longer lived parents were less likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke, heart failure and cancer.

For each decade a mother survived past the age of 69, the chances of her children dying from any cause fell by 16%, the findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed. A similar association with fathers led to a 17% reduction in mortality.

The risk of dying from heart disease was 20%-21% lower for every 10 years a mother or father, respectively, lived beyond 69, while the chances of being diagnosed with cancer were reduced by 8% overall.

All the participants had volunteered to be part of the UK Biobank, a registered charity providing health, lifestyle and test result data on half a million people.

Lead scientist Dr Janice Atkins, from the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "To our knowledge, this is the largest study to show that the longer your parents live, the more likely you are to remain healthy in your 60s and 70s.

"Asking about parents' longevity could help us predict our likelihood of ageing well and developing conditions such as heart disease, in order to identify patients at higher or lower risk in time to treat them appropriately."

Previous UK Biobank research by the Exeter team showed a genetic link between parents' longevity and the risk of Alzheimer's and heart disease.

That study, reported in the journal Aging, involved 75,000 participants and found that offspring of longer-lived parents were more likely to have protective variants of genes linked to coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and Alzheimer's.

Professor George Kuchel, a co-author of the new research and director of the UConn Centre on Ageing in the US, said: "This study provides additional fuel to really bolster research efforts by us and others in geroscience, a field that seeks to understand relationships between the biology of ageing and age-related diseases.

"Ageing is the most important risk factor for common chronic conditions such as heart disease, Alzheimer's and cancer, which are likely to share pathways with ageing and therefore interventions designed to slow biological ageing processes may also delay the onset of disease and disability, thus expanding years of healthy and independent lives for our seniors."

Parental lifespan was shown to have an influence even after taking account of important lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and obesity.

No significant association was seen between parental longevity and the risk of bowel, breast or prostate cancer, and diabetes.