Longevity — it’s in your genes
The genetic markers can be used to predict ‘exceptional longevity’ with 77% accuracy. And they may hold the secrets for treating or preventing many age-related diseases.
July 02, 2010|By Rachel Bernstein, Los Angeles Times
They may not have discovered the fountain of youth, but scientists are beginning to unravel some of the mysteries of living past 100 — specifically, that it’s in your genes.
The study, led by Paola Sebastiani and Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston University and published online Thursday in the journal Science, analyzed the DNA of more than 1,000 centenarians and found a set of small DNA variations called genetic markers that can be used to predict “exceptional longevity” with 77% accuracy.
But the story’s not a simple one: There’s no single “longevity gene.” For most of the golden agers, long life appeared to result from the cumulative effect of many of the 150 markers, and different markers showed up in different people.
“The study shows that there are different paths to becoming a centenarian,” said Boston University graduate student and coauthor Nadia Solovieff. “People age in different ways.”
These markers may have some predictive power down the road for people who want to know if they’re destined for long life, researchers said. But genes alone are far from the whole story: For the vast majority of people, environment and lifestyle are also known to play important roles in aging. Only upon reaching these extremely old ages — which most people never see — do genes take center stage.
In the United States, where the average life expectancy is about 78 years, centenarians account for about 1 out of every 6,000 people. Supercentenarians, or people over the age of 110, are even rarer, at 1 out of 7 million.
“It’s kind of like winning the lottery,” Perls said.
There are social reasons to avoid the game of prediction as well, including concerns about how it might affect health insurance premiums and whether people are equipped with guidelines to respond appropriately to the results, Perls said.
Researchers said the task now is to characterize the genes and biochemical pathways identified in the study. Down the line, such information could be used to develop drugs for age-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, which occur at much lower rates in centenarians.
“This really opens the door to future research,” Perls said.
Though many potential genes were identified in the study, researchers were actually encouraged that the number wasn’t higher.
