How do superagers stay so young? Genes can play a key role, study suggests
People in their 80s with high brain function are far less likely to carry the APOE4 gene than those showing mental decline, research finds
Ageing has arguably always been a puzzle. There is the 82-year-old part-time farmer down the road who remains light on his feet, while his 60-something accountant neighbour gets short of breath walking from car to office.
According to a team of scientists at Vanderbilt University in the US state of Tennessee, “superagers” such as the farmer could have an innate advantage over the prematurely old, at least when it comes to cognition.
According to the university, those in their 80s with brain function “comparable to people 20 or 30 years younger” are much less likely to carry the dreaded APOE4 gene than those of the same age bracket exhibiting signs of mental decline.
Not only are the forever-young octogenarians 68 per cent less likely to harbour “the gene that nobody wants” than peers with dementia, but they are 19 per cent less likely to have it than the “cognitively normal” of the same age.
The team’s findings were published earlier this month in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia and were based on a study of around 18,000 people.
The results carried even more good news for superagers: they were almost 30 per cent more likely to have APOE2 – “the variant you’d want”, according to Vanderbilt – than those who aged as expected, and 103 per cent more likely than those with dementia.