Genetic Associations with Longevity are Stronger in Women

In this study, we discovered that genetic associations with longevity are on average stronger in females than in males through bio-demographic analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) dataset of 2178 centenarians and 2299 middle-age controls of Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS). This discovery is replicated across North and South regions of China, and is further confirmed by North-South discovery/replication analyses of different and independent datasets of Chinese healthy aging candidate genes with CLHLS participants who are not in CLHLS GWAS, including 2972 centenarians and 1992 middle-age controls. Our polygenic risk score analyses of eight exclusive groups of sex-specific genes, analyses of sex-specific and not-sex-specific individual genes, and Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis using all SNPs all reconfirm that genetic associations with longevity are on average stronger in females than in males. Our discovery/replication analyses are based on genetic datasets of in total 5150 centenarians and compatible middle-age controls, which comprises the worldwide largest sample of centenarians. Our results beg the question of why are genetic associations with longevity on average stronger in females than in males? The fact that females take much more care for childbearing and offspring than males may shed light on answering this question. Studies related to age-specific manifestation of genetic load suggest that fertility serves as the major f...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs