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Estimation of apolipoprotein E genotype‐specific relative mortality risks from the distribution of genotypes in centenarians and middle‐aged men: Apolipoprotein E gene is a “frailty gene,” not a “longevity gene”
Author(s) -
Gerdes Lars Ulrik,
Jeune Bernard,
Ranberg Karen Andersen,
Nybo Hanne,
Vaupel James W.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
genetic epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.301
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1098-2272
pISSN - 0741-0395
DOI - 10.1002/1098-2272(200010)19:3<202::aid-gepi2>3.0.co;2-q
Subject(s) - genotype , apolipoprotein e , danish , longevity , demography , genetics , odds ratio , biology , allele , gene , medicine , sociology , philosophy , linguistics , disease
We developed a method to estimate genotype‐specific average relative mortality risk, R , from genotype distributions in cross‐sectional studies of people belonging to different age‐groups, and applied the method to new data from a study of apolipoprotein E genotypes (apoE) in 177 Danish centenarians and data from a study of 40‐year‐old Danish men. Twenty‐one percent of the centenarians were ϵ2‐carriers (genotypes ϵ2ϵ2 and ϵ3ϵ2) and 15% were ϵ4‐carriers (genotypes ϵ4ϵ4 and ϵ4ϵ3) compared to 13 and 29%, respectively, of the young men. The R ‐values were 0.95 (95% CI 0.88 to 1.02) for ϵ2‐carriers and 1.13 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.22) for ϵ4‐carriers, using ϵ3ϵ3‐ and ϵ4ϵ2 genotypes as reference. Corresponding values for ϵ4‐carriers were obtained by using published data from a French and a Finnish study of centenarians, whereas the values for ϵ2‐carriers were about 0.90 with these data. The method to estimate mortality risk and the results associate with the view that the apoE gene is a “frailty gene.” On the other hand, if odds ratios are used to summarize data from studies of this kind, they are more impressive and may propagate the misconception that apoE is a “longevity gene”. Genet. Epidemiol. 19:202–210, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.