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Approved research

Genetic determinants of healthy ageing.

Principal Investigator: Dr Mikko Kuokkanen
Approved Research ID: 28368
Approval date: July 1st 2017

Lay summary

High and healthy lifespan has a significant genetic component. It is yet unclear whether this is due to lack of predisposing genetic variants for various diseases in healthy elderly people or whether there would be specific genetic variants that make the effect of ageing less detrimental for the carriers. Our goal is to identify genetic variants in persons with long (>75 years) healthspan and compare those individuals to persons deceased <75 years of age and >75 YoA unhealthy survivors diagnosed with (at least one of following condition) cvd, stroke, diabetes, dementia, cancer, COPD, asthma, rheuma, crohn?s disease, malabsorption, kidney failure. Our research will perfectly fit in UK Biobank?s purpose. We are aiming to understand genetics and mechanisms behind long aged healthy individuals. The identification of the genetic mechanisms for healthy ageing will direct the efforts to promote such a trait in population at large. We are aiming to perform a genomewide association study in UK biobank?s data. We will define healthy ageing to be free of major diseases (listed in 1a) in age of 75 years old and beyond. These individuals serve as healthy cases. Analyses will be performed in three different control sets: gwas1: Unhealthy >75 YoA survivors (having the diagnosis or medication for the listed traits). gwas2: Deceased <75 YoA combined with unhealthy survivors (gwas1). gwas3: Whole data set, except healthy cases. Results of the UK Biobank will be compared in parallel with our Finrisk cohorts (Finland) or other available cohorts. The full cohort.