Cournil A, Legay J M, Schächter F
Biométrie-Génétique et Biologie des Populations, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France.
Proc Biol Sci. 2000 May 22;267(1447):1021-5. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2000.1105.
A long-standing puzzle in gerontology is the sex dependence of human longevity and its inheritance. We have analysed the sex-linked pattern of inheritance of longevity from 643 nuclear families on the historical population register of a French valley. We have focused on mean conditional life expectancy at a minimum age of 50 years, thus, in the present study, longevity refers to late or post-reproductive survival. A comparison of parents' and offspring's longevity has shown the existence of a heritable component of late survival in this population. We have found that the heritable component was substantially larger for daughters compared to sons. Moreover, this result appeared to be specific to late survival, that is, when only post-reproductive mortality for parental and offspring generations is taken into account. The stronger resemblance of parents to their daughters was no longer observed when considering younger ages at death for the offspring. This observation explains the hitherto unaccountable diversity of data in previous studies.
老年学中一个长期存在的谜题是人类寿命的性别依赖性及其遗传方式。我们分析了法国一个山谷历史人口登记册上643个核心家庭中寿命的性连锁遗传模式。我们关注的是最低年龄为50岁时的平均条件预期寿命，因此，在本研究中，长寿指的是生殖后期或生殖后的存活。对父母和后代寿命的比较表明，该人群中生殖后期存活存在可遗传成分。我们发现，与儿子相比，女儿的可遗传成分要大得多。此外，这一结果似乎特定于生殖后期存活，也就是说，仅考虑父母和后代两代的生殖后死亡率时才会出现。当考虑后代更年轻的死亡年龄时，父母与女儿之间更强的相似性就不再明显。这一观察结果解释了以往研究中数据一直无法解释的多样性。
