New Genetic Model Accurately Predicts Who's Likely to Live to 100
Jeanne Louise Calment Lived to Age 122 In 1997, Jeanne Louise Calment of France died at the age of 122, making her the oldest documented human to have ever lived. People who live to be 100 years or older are rare, and only about 1 in 600,000 people in industrialized nations live that long. But is there something genetically unique about centenarians that enables them to age gracefully and relatively disease-free? According to the results of a long-term study at Boston University School of Medicine, the answer is yes. As part of the New England Centenarian Study, a team of aging research specialists led by Paola Sebastiani and Tom Perls looked at 300,000 genetic markers in 800 centenarians and compared their profiles with those of random individuals. They then developed a genetic model that can compute an individual's predisposition to living a long life and found that centenarians shared a...