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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The effect of genetic factors for longevity
— a comparison of identical and fraternal twins in the Swedish Twin Registry | | Author(s) | Birgit Ljungquist, Stig Berg, Jan Lanke |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological sciences and medical sciences, vol 53A, no 6, November 1998 |
| Pages | pp M441-M446 |
| Keywords | Longevity ; Biological ageing ; Twins ; Correlation ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | A sample of 3,656 identical and 6,849 same-sex fraternal twin pairs in the Swedish Twin Registry was studied regarding mortality rates and within-pair similarity for age and death. Genetic and environmental contributions to variations in longevity, expressed by integrated mortality rates, were estimated from a subsample of 1,734 twin pairs reared together and 130 twin pairs reared apart from the cohorts born 1886 to 1900. The intra-class correlation coefficients suggested that the genetic effect was small, and for males, perhaps absent. Among pairs in which both twins died relatively young and among pairs in which both twins lived until very old age, the variance in age at death seemed to have no genetic component. Model fitting procedures based on twins reared apart and twins reared together indicated that most of the variance in longevity was explained by environmental factors. Over the total age range examined, a maximum of around one third of the variance in longevity is attributable to genetic factors, and almost all remaining variance is due to non-shared, individual specific environmental factors. The evidence that genetic factors play a minor role depending on age at death merits further examination. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990302004 A |
| Classmark | BGA: BH: SVR: 49: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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