Gateway Building, MSC 9205, National Institute on Aging, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892-9205, USA.
Am J Epidemiol. 2009 Dec 15;170(12):1555-62. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwp309. Epub 2009 Nov 12.
Family studies of exceptional longevity can potentially identify genetic and other factors contributing to long life and healthy aging. Although such studies seek families that are exceptionally long lived, they also need living members who can provide DNA and phenotype information. On the basis of these considerations, the authors developed a metric to rank families for selection into a family study of longevity. Their measure, the family longevity selection score (FLoSS), is the sum of 2 components: 1) an estimated family longevity score built from birth-, gender-, and nation-specific cohort survival probabilities and 2) a bonus for older living siblings. The authors examined properties of FLoSS-based family rankings by using data from 3 ongoing studies: the New England Centenarian Study, the Framingham Heart Study, and screenees for the Long Life Family Study. FLoSS-based selection yields families with exceptional longevity, satisfactory sibship sizes and numbers of living siblings, and high ages. Parameters in the FLoSS formula can be tailored for studies of specific populations or age ranges or with different conditions. The first component of the FLoSS also provides a conceptually sound survival measure to characterize exceptional longevity in individuals or families in various types of studies and correlates well with later-observed longevity.
家族研究非凡的长寿可以潜在地确定遗传和其他因素对长寿和健康衰老的贡献。尽管这些研究旨在寻找长寿的家族，但它们也需要有健在的成员提供 DNA 和表型信息。基于这些考虑，作者开发了一种衡量标准，对家族进行排名，以选择进入长寿家族研究。他们的度量标准是家族长寿选择评分（FLoSS），它是两个组成部分的总和：1）基于出生时、性别和国籍特定队列的生存概率构建的家族长寿估计评分，2）对于年长的健在兄弟姐妹的额外加分。作者使用来自 3 项正在进行的研究的数据，即新英格兰百岁老人研究、弗雷明汉心脏研究和长寿家族研究的筛查者，来检验基于 FLoSS 的家族排名的特性。基于 FLoSS 的选择产生了具有非凡长寿、满意的兄弟姐妹数量和健在兄弟姐妹数量以及高年龄的家族。FLoSS 公式中的参数可以针对特定人群或年龄范围的研究进行调整，或者针对具有不同条件的研究进行调整。FLoSS 的第一个组成部分还提供了一种概念上合理的生存衡量标准，用于描述各种类型研究中的个体或家族的非凡长寿，并与后来观察到的长寿密切相关。
