Longevity all in the genes, report finds
Most modern day centenarians share many of the 150 genetic markers that a new study has found are key to an extraordinarily long life.
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Methuselah must have had all of them.
But the vast majority of modern day centenarians share many of the 150 genetic markers that a new study has found are key to an extraordinarily long life.
And the discovery of these fountain-of-youth markers could lead to computer chip screens that can identify those who are likely to see 100 birthdays and to therapies that could combat many of the age-related ailments they avoid, the study’s authors say.
“Exceptional longevity is not this vacuous entity that no one can figure out,” said Dr. Tom Pearls, a senior study author.
“I think we’ve made quite some inroads here in terms of demonstrating a pretty important genetic component to this wonderful trait,” said Pearls, a Boston University gerontologist.
The study appears Friday in the journal Science.
In it, researchers scanned the genomes of 1,000 centenarians and identified some 150 genetic markers — or gene signatures — that set them apart from the general population.
And the more of these markers people possessed, the longer they were likely to live past 100, says Pearls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, which tracks 1,600 people who’ve reached that milestone.
Some combination of the markers were seen in 77 out of 100 centenarians in one study sampling. Exceptionally healthy lifestyles or undiscovered genes may account for the other 23 per cent, the authors say.
Surprisingly, most of the study’s elderly subjects possessed genes linked to such common ailments as heart disease, hypertension and dementias in proportions similar to those in the rest of the population.
But the vast majority of centenarians seem to stave off these maladies until the very end of their lives, well past the time when most of their peers have succumbed to them, says Paola Sebastiana, a Boston University biostatistician.
This leads the authors to believe that the 70 or so genes that the longevity markers are associated with offer substantial protections from the most common and lethal diseases of aging.
“A lot of people might ask, well, who would want to live to 100, because they think they have every age related disease under the sun, and are on death’s doorstep,” Pearls said during a telephone press conference.
“But this isn’t true…90 per cent of centenarians are disability free at the average age of 93. So they very much compress their disability towards the very end of their lives.”
About one in 6,000 people will reach 100 years of age in industrialized countries.
And Pearls says a computer chip screen for the longevity markers will almost certainly be created in the near future to pick them out.
But because there are so many genes involved in achieving great age, and because they would interact in so many different ways, Pearls says that it’s unlikely they could be used to concoct a longevity elixir for the rest of us.
He is hopeful, however, they may well provide future screens and therapeutics for individual ailments like Alzheimer’s disease or hypertension.
If the genes are helping to stave off these diseases, Pears says, scientists may be able to teas out their protective products and use them in treatments.
Andrew Sugden, international managing editor of Science, warned that regular exercise, good diet and avoiding tobacco would be critical to a long, healthy life, no matter what genetic advantages a person may hold.
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