Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Genetic components of aging discovered - CETP vs LP(a)

Einstein researchers use novel approach to uncover genetic components of aging EurekAlert 2007.08.24
"...“We hypothesized that people living to 100 and beyond must be buffered by genes that interact with disease-causing genes to negate their effects,” says Dr. Aviv Bergman...Centenarians are so rare in human populations—only one in 10,000 people live to be 100—that “longevity” genes probably wouldn’t turn up in a typical control group. Longevity runs in families, so 430 children of centenarians were added to the control group to increase the number of favorable genes...As expected, some disease-related gene variants were as prevalent or even more prevalent in the oldest cohorts of Ashkenazi Jews than in the younger ones. And as Dr. Bergman had predicted, genes associated with longevity also became more common in each succeeding cohort. “These results indicate that the frequency of deleterious genotypes may increase among people who live to extremely old ages because their protective genes allow these disease-related genes to accumulate,” says Dr. Bergman...favorable variant of the gene CETP acts to buffer the harmful effects of the disease-causing gene Lp(a)...If future research finds that a single longevity gene buffers against several disease-causing genes, then drugs that mimic the action of the longevity gene could help protect against cardiovascular disease and other age-related diseases... "

Full study at PLoS.

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