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Is Longevity Inherited? A Comparison of the Ancestors of Two of the World's Oldest Inhabitants.

2001; Institut national d'études démographiques; Volume: Vol. 56; Issue: HS1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3917/popu.p2001.13n1.0241

1957-7966

B. Desjardins,

Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms

Longevity fascinates, and the reasons are obvious. In every period there are some people - not so long ago it was nonagenarians, at present it is centenarians who outlive most of their contemporaries by a large margin. We know that any distribution of probabilistic events will contain extremes, yet where longevity is concerned most observers refuse to recognize a simple effect of chance in the fact that one person can live to be very old and another not, once the various factors of environmental differentiation between individuals have been controlled for. There has always been a popular belief in a form of heritability of longevity whereby the fact of attaining very high ages is seen as a characteristic specific to certain families, a result of genetic factors. Numerous studies have sought to confirm this belief, but while most agree on the existence of a family component to duration of life, none has been able to produce a definitive answer to the question. Studying the heritability of longevity does encounter serious methodological difficulties. First, obtaining satisfactory measurements requires lengthy longitudinal observation which is seldom available and is subject to multiple bias. Second, the role of the environmental factors which have changed especially rapidly in the last one or two hundred years is so great that they mask nearly everything else. One interesting option available to the researcher is the study of extreme cases, that is of the people who have profited most from a high biological potential. The assumption behind this approach is that if the phenomenon is present it will be more pronounced in these individuals. That would seem to be the conclusion from the results of a study by Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard, on the ancestors of Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days, the highest verified age ever attained by a human [6]. Taking advantage of the long-established position of Madame Calment's family in the bourgeoisie of Arles, Robine and Allard were able to demonstrate a clear tendency to longevity in the ancestors of the famous old lady.