X-Message-Number: 27830
Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 11:26:48 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Cracking the Longevity Code 

[Probably 6 people will post this--Keith]

Long-lived.
Photos from 1910 and 1999, showing one of the families that participated in 
the study.
Credit: Keane family
Cracking the Longevity Code
By Susanne McDowell
ScienceNOW Daily News
4 April 2006
Living to a ripe old age takes more than a healthy lifestyle: you've got to 
have the right combination of genes. The question is, which ones? 
Scientists now have several promising candidates thanks to the discovery of 
a gene variation in humans that appears to increase lifespan and lower the 
risk of cardiovascular diseases. The finding could eventually lead to the 
development of life-extending drugs.

Studies of worms and fruit flies show that variations, or polymorphisms, in 
a single gene can affect how long these creatures live. Scientists think 
humans carry tens or even hundreds of related polymorphisms. But they're 
tough to identify -researchers have found only a few since the mid-1990s. 
In 2003, Nir Barzilai and Gil Atzmon, who study aging at Albert Einstein 
College of Medicine in New York, discovered that people with a certain 
polymorphism of the cholesterol-influencing gene CETP lived longer than 
those without it (ScienceNOW, October 2003). Now the researchers have 
identified another part of the longevity code.

In a study reported in this month's issue of PLoS Biology, Barzilai and 
Atzmon examined the genetic makeup of 213 centenarians. All were Ashkenazi 
Jews, a group with a relatively uniform genetic pool in which differences 
tend to stand out. The researchers also compared the centenarians' children 
with a control group comprised of individuals whose parents died before 
reaching 85. They found that 25% of the centenarians carried a particular 
variation of the gene APOC3, which helps determine cholesterol levels. The 
same variation was found in 20% of their children but only 10% of the 
control group, suggesting that long life runs in families. Those with the 
polymorphism were 15% less likely to have high blood pressure and had a 
significantly decreased risk for cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

A drug that mimics the function of the CETP gene is already in development, 
says Atzmon, and the same could happen with APCO3. Eventually multiple gene 
functions could be simulated by a single pill. "You'd take it once a day 
like a vitamin," he says.
The researchers have done a "remarkable job" of recruiting and studying a 
rare population, says Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Boston Medical Center 
in Massachusetts. What's needed now is confirmation in other groups, says 
Bard Geesaman, a scientist at Elixir Pharmaceuticals--which develops drugs 
for age-related diseases--in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And researchers will 
have to discover many more of the genes involved before they can fully 
understand their collective impact on health, he says.
Full text from ScienceNow
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/404/1?etoc

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