Genetic Variants are not an Important Risk Factor in the Vast Majority of People and Age-Related Conditions

This is an age of genetics, in which the costs of obtaining and working with genetic data have dropped by orders of magnitude, while the capabilities of the tools and technologies have expanded to a similar degree. Give the scientific community a hammer, and a great many parts of the field start to look like a nail. Thus there are innumerable studies of genetics and longevity, genetics and specific age-related diseases, and so forth. There is considerable interest in trying to find out whether there is a genetic contribution to survival to extreme old age, and then using this information to develop therapies. What the data tells us, however, is that we all age in pretty much the same way. The underlying processes of damage and reactions to damage are the same in everyone. The risk of age-related disease is not all that influenced by genetics for the vast majority of people and vast majority of conditions. Long-lived lineages of humans are a tiny, tiny fraction of the population, and may well exist for cultural rather than genetic reasons. Only a tiny number of genetic variants have been reliably correlated with longevity, and the effect sizes in each case are small, the variants adding only modestly to the odds of living longer. What has by far the largest effect on variations in human aging? Firstly lifestyle, largely exercise and diet, and secondly environment, largely exposure to pathogens, particularly persistent viral infections. This will remain the case u...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs