Evolution, mutations, and human longevity: European royal and noble families

Another interesting implication of the obtained results is the explanation of the longevity paradox: Although the heritability estimates for longevity have been reported to be rather low (Murphy 1978; Wyshak 1978; McGue et al. 1993), it is also well known that cases of extreme longevity have strong familial association (Pearl 1931; Pearl and Dewitt 1934). This paradox could be explained by the present observation that heritability for human longevity is low only when it is studied in the wide age range but that heritability for longevity is rather high when estimated for long-lived parents (see Table 1).

The results presented here indicate that the familial component of human longevity was probably understated in previous studies, particularly in the case of longer lived parents. Further studies in this direction on larger sample sizes and other data sets (for comparative analysis) are planned because they could result in significant progress in understanding the mechanisms of familial transmission of human longevity.

Acknowledgments We are most grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this paper for helpful critical comments and interesting scientific ideas for discussion. We are also grateful to Brian Charlesworth for his comments on this research and for providing us with the opportunity to present these results at a scientific seminar at the University of Chicago (January 1997). The results of this study were also presented and discussed at the International Scientific REVES 10 Meeting on Health Expectancy (Tokyo, October 1997), and we appreciate helpful comments on this work made by the participants of this meeting. This research was supported in part by the European Community through INTAS grant 93-1617-ext and by the National Institute of Aging through grants P20 AG12857 and 1R03 AG13698-01.

Received 3 October 1996; revision received 24 October 1997.

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