Vascular Genetic Factors And Lipoprotein Metabolism In Human Longevity

Complex inter-relationships between age-associated illnesses such as vascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) suggest that biological and genetic pathways may be worthy of examination in centenarian populations to provide insights into human longevity. The search for factors involved in aging and longevity has progressed extensively in the recent years because of increased human life expectancy and elevation of the number of elderly people. Different genetic and non genetic factors have been examined in the quest to understand the biological basis of human longevity. Indeed, it can be hypothesised that centenarians have environmental and genetic factors that confer unexpected survival advantage. Examples of such advantage are characterized by marked delay or escape from age-related diseases, such as coronary artery disease (CAD), cerebrovascular disease (CVD), and AD, respectively, the first, the third, and the fourth largest causes of mortality, in the western populatio n. Th us one can suggest that genes and biochemical factors likely to be implicated in these disorders may have a role in human longevity. In this chapter, the authors discuss the evidence that genetic factors, lipids, and lipoproteins, likely to be linked to both vascular disease and AD, may have an additional role in determining human longevity, with special emphasis placed on the APOE and ACE1 genes.