Environmental factors have been implicated in human longevity, but their specificity and causality remain largely unclear. By integrating the innovative concept of “exposure group” in the field of environmental epidemiology, the team from Huashan Yujintai aims to use Mendelian randomization (MR) method to determine the exposure group with Longevity has a causal component, the results were published in the journal BMC Medicine.
A total of 4587 environmental exposures were extracted from 361,194 individuals in the UK Biobank, and the exogenous and endogenous domains of the exposure group were assessed. The relationship between each environmental factor and two longevity outcomes (i.e., age to survive to the 90th or 99th percentile) was investigated in different cohorts of European ancestry. Significant results corrected for false discovery rate, validated using an independent exposure dataset.
Results showed that across all environmental exposures, eight age-related diseases and pathological conditions were causally linked to reduced odds of longevity, including coronary atherosclerosis ( OR=0.77, 95%CI 0.70, 0.84), ischemic heart disease (0.66, [0.51, 0.87],), angina (0.73, [0.65, 0.83]), Alzheimer’s disease (0.80, [0.72, 0.89]), hypertension (0.70, [0.64, 0.77]), type 2 diabetes (0.88 [0.80, 0.96]), high cholesterol (0.81, [0.72, 0.91]) and venous thromboembolism (0.92, [ 0.87, 0.97]).
After adjusting for genetic correlations between different types of lipids, higher LDL-C levels (0.72 [0.64, 0.80]) were associated with lower odds of longevity, while HDL- C(1.36 [1.13, 1.62]) shows the opposite. More body fat, especially trunk fat mass, and never eating sugar or sugary foods/drinks were negatively associated with longevity, while education did.
Taken together, this study supports a causal relationship between some age-related diseases and education and longevity, and highlights several new goals for longevity, including management of venous thromboembolism, appropriate sugar intake, and control of body fat.
Editor: Primary school students at the bottom of Luojia Mountain
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