Gene pattern predicts old age
Source: Agencies |
July 3, 2010, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
RESEARCHERS have found a pattern of genes that predicts with more accuracy than ever before who might live to be 100 or older -- even if they have other genes linked with disease.
Their findings, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science, offer the tantalizing possibility of predicting who might hope for a longer life.
They also cast doubt on the accuracy of tests being marketed now that offer to predict a person's risk of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Several teams of researchers have identified gene patterns linked with extreme old age.
But the researchers led by Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls at Boston University say theirs provides the best accuracy yet.
They studied more than 1,000 people who lived to be 100 or more and matched them to 1,200 other people to identify the genetic patterns more common in the 100-year-olds using a genome-wide association study.
To their surprise, the longest-lived people had many of the same genes linked with diseases as everyone else.
Their old-age genes appeared to cancel out the effects of the disease genes.
They identified 19 patterns among about 150 genes and said these patterns predicted with 77 percent accuracy who would be in the extreme old-age group.
Their findings, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science, offer the tantalizing possibility of predicting who might hope for a longer life.
They also cast doubt on the accuracy of tests being marketed now that offer to predict a person's risk of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Several teams of researchers have identified gene patterns linked with extreme old age.
But the researchers led by Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls at Boston University say theirs provides the best accuracy yet.
They studied more than 1,000 people who lived to be 100 or more and matched them to 1,200 other people to identify the genetic patterns more common in the 100-year-olds using a genome-wide association study.
To their surprise, the longest-lived people had many of the same genes linked with diseases as everyone else.
Their old-age genes appeared to cancel out the effects of the disease genes.
They identified 19 patterns among about 150 genes and said these patterns predicted with 77 percent accuracy who would be in the extreme old-age group.
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