A Genomic Search for Longevity-Associated Genes Points to Iron Metabolism in Human Aging

As a general rule, one should be skeptical about any and all single studies that identify longevity-associated genes from human data. Typically the results cannot be replicated in different study populations, and the effect sizes are in any case small. Identified gene variants confer only small changes in the odds of reaching a given age. Only a handful of gene variants show up reliably in multiple studies carried out in different human populations. So, unfortunately, however interesting or novel the data in a new study, such as the association of longevity with maintenance of normal iron levels noted in today's open access research paper, there is a good chance that it will remain unconfirmed. Other approaches to determining the genetic contribution to longevity tend to indicate that genetic variants are much less important than lifestyle choices for near every individual. This all suggests that there exist a very large number of tiny, interacting, situational gene variants that influence longevity, but most likely nothing more promising than that. This isn't the road to greatly extended healthy human life spans; it is a road to better understanding the fine details of aging as it occurs today, very little influenced by medicine. Multivariate genomic scan implicates novel loci and haem metabolism in human ageing Ageing phenotypes, such as years lived in good health (healthspan), total years lived (lifespan), and survival until an exceptional old age (l...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs