Centenarians represent a rare phenotype appearing in roughly 10–20 per 100,000 persons
in most industrialized countries but as high as 40–50 per 100,000 persons in Okinawa …

Centenarians exist at the extreme of life expectancy and are rare. A number of pedigree and
molecular genetic studies indicate that a significant component of exceptional longevity is …

Background. As elite representatives of the rapidly increasing “oldest-old” population,
centenarians have become an important model population for understanding human aging …

There is a substantial distinction to be made between the genetics of aging and the genetics
of exceptional longevity. Twin studies suggest that the average set of genetic variations …

Centenarians represent an extreme of life expectancy. They achieve their exceptional
longevity in part by lacking genetic variations linked to premature death. Pedigree studies …

Despite evidence from family studies that there is a strong genetic influence upon
exceptional longevity, relatively few genetic variants have been associated with this trait …

The New England Centenarian Study (NECS) was founded in 1994 as a longitudinal study
of centenarians to determine if centenarians could be a model of healthy human aging. Over …

Once thought to be an extremely complex conundrum of weak genetic and environmental
effects, exceptional longevity is beginning to yield genetic findings. Numerous lower …

To live beyond the octogenarian years, population and molecular genetic studies of
centenarian sibships indicate that genetic factors play an increasingly important role as the …

Okinawa, an isolated island prefecture of Japan, has among the highest prevalence of
exceptionally long-lived individuals in the world; therefore, we hypothesized that, within this …