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4d ago

Study Recasts Genetics as About Half of Human Longevity After Excluding External Deaths

Researchers modeled intrinsic mortality in twin cohorts to estimate heritability once accidents, infections, and violence were theoretically removed.

Cuánto influyen los genes en la esperanza de vida de una persona
El President Salvador Illa, junto la Consellera Mònica Martínez Bravo, en un homenaje a los centenarios en Catalunya
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Overview

  • The analysis, published January 29 in Science, was led by Ben Shenhar at the Weizmann Institute with collaborators in Scandinavia and the United States.
  • Authors combined classical mortality models such as Gompertz–Makeham with a mechanistic aging model of saturable elimination to simulate deaths independent of aging.
  • Twin and sibling datasets from Denmark and Sweden, including SATSA, and U.S. centenarian families underpinned the recalculated estimates.
  • The study reports roughly 50–55% heritability for intrinsic lifespan, contrasting with earlier estimates near 20–25% from twin studies and about 6% from genealogy analyses.
  • Co-authors argue the result supports expanded searches for longevity genes, while independent experts stress the figure is model-based, sensitive to survival conditioning, and not direct evidence of specific variants.