WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that the genes you inherit have a bigger influence on how long you live than scientists once believed.
'Lifespan is undoubtedly shaped by many factors, including lifestyle, genes and, importantly, randomness - take for example genetically identical organisms raised in similar environments that die at different times,' said lead author Ben Shenhar, a doctoral student in physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Researchers reviewed old data from studies on human twins. They found that earlier research did not fully consider deaths caused by violence, accidents, or infectious diseases. Many of these studies only recorded the age at which a person died, not the reason for death.
They argued that this could be misleading. For example, if one twin lived to 90 and died naturally, while the other died at 30 from an infectious disease, it might wrongly suggest that genetics had little effect on lifespan.
In the new study, researchers used a mathematical model to account for these outside causes of death. The lead researcher noted that when many of the twins in earlier studies were alive, before antibiotics were widely available, deaths from infections were much more common, about 10 times higher than today.
The team then tested their idea using newer data from Sweden, including twins raised together and twins raised apart. This analysis showed that as deaths from outside causes decreased, the influence of genetics on lifespan became clearer.
Even after adjusting for the higher risk of infections and falls in older age, the researchers found that genes still play a major role. Overall, genetic factors were found to account for about 50 percent of a person's life expectancy.
'Low heritability estimates may have discouraged funding and research into the genetics of aging, suggesting it was largely random or environmental. Our work validates the search for genetic factors of longevity, showing that the genetic signal is strong but was previously hidden by 'noise' in the data,' Shenhar concluded.
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