Genomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging. In a study, recently published in Nature Communications, a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents' survival, helped discover two regions associated with longevity (HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA). Previous suggestions that APOE, CHRNA3/5, CDKN2A/B, SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity have also been validated. Next, the study shows that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated. The authors suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD. Using instrumental variables, they suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan. The National Research Council (Institute of Molecular Genetics of Pavia-Ginevra Biino- and the Institute of Population Genetics of Sassari) also participated in the study with data from an epidemiological survey conducted on the isolated populations of Sardinia.
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