12 loci of age-related diseases
Scientists measured the risk of getting a chronic disease after 40. It doubles every 8 years
Vera Mukhina, N+1
Russian researchers have found that the risk of getting age–related chronic diseases in old age increases at about the same rate as the risk of death - it doubles every eight years after 40. In addition, the authors of the study, published in the journal Communications Biology, found 12 DNA sites associated with life expectancy without chronic age-related diseases.
The search for the upper limits of life expectancy and longevity genes is a hot area in biology. Many studies are based on the study of deep centenarians, but this approach has a number of drawbacks. Firstly, there are not very many people who have lived to an outstanding age, and therefore studies on them periodically sin with statistical errors or simply a lack of data. Secondly, life expectancy itself does not directly say anything about its quality.
A group of scientists from MIPT and Gero under the leadership of Yuri Aulchenko used an alternative approach and analyzed the duration of not the whole life, but only the time before the onset of age-related diseases, the so-called healthy life expectancy. This allowed them to use a large pool of data, which included information about the genotypes and phenotypes of 300.5 thousand British residents aged 37 to 73 years.
Analyzing the dynamics of the incidence of the most common diseases – causes of death in old age, the researchers noticed that the probability of getting sick with them increases with age as well as the chances of dying from any cause, doubling approximately every eight years. "Such a close relationship between the most common chronic diseases and mortality indicates that their risks can be regulated by the same process, namely, aging. That is why the duration of a healthy life can be used to study genetic factors that control the rate of aging," says one of the leaders of the study, Peter Fedichev.
The figure shows the incidence of the most common age-related diseases at different ages, including cancer, heart failure, diabetes and dementia. In addition, the graph shows mortality (orange) and the overall chances of getting sick with age-related diseases (brown). Figures from the article by Zenin et al. Identification of 12 genetic loci associated with human healthspan.
Having estimated the healthy life expectancy for each individual, the researchers traced the relationship of these figures with individual characteristics, including both the presence of variants of individual genes in the genome, and general information about human life. This search was crowned with success – both the expected general regulators of healthy life expectancy, such as smoking, a person's gender, obesity or education, and genetic associations were found. 12 DNA sites with 328 mutation variants were associated with the risk of getting sick earlier or later than their peers, some of which were already mentioned earlier in the literature and turned out to be indicators of diseases and total life expectancy.
12 sites in the genome located on the Manhattan graph above the red line were associated with late or early development of age-related diseases.
There are many human habits associated with slower aging or a lower risk of dying young. These include maintaining a healthy lifestyle, forming strong and numerous social ties, stress resistance and others.
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