Roughly one in five people aged 80 and older have DNA errors in his or her blood cells that are also present in leukaemia patients. Elderly however, do not seem to suffer from these mutations.
The body ages due to genetic errors that gradually accumulate over the course of one’s life. Or so it is believed. To test this theory, a group of researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), TU Delft and Erasmus MC in Rotterdam examined the DNA of elderly individuals.
During their study, which included 864 people aged 80 and older, the scientists discovered that many of these people carry the kind of genetic defects which play a major role in the occurrence of leukaemia. Of the individuals examined who were above the age of 90, almost twenty percent had these kinds of DNA errors in their blood. This is considerably higher than the number of carriers found in previous studies that focused on middle-aged individuals. In other words, it would seem that ageing leads to an accumulation of these DNA errors.
Remarkably, these genetic defects in the elderly do not translate into a lower life expectancy. The researchers published their findings in the March 17 edition of the scientific journal Blood
A striking difference is that the middle-aged individuals in previous studies with the same DNA errors suffer ill effects from them. This includes shorter life expectancy, according to Erik Van den Akker, an LUMC researcher. “The elderly, on the other hand, appear to not be negatively affected by these types of DNA errors in their blood, despite the fact that we usually view them as a very fragile group. In our study, there was even a 107-year-old woman who, for at least the past 10 years, had had a genetic defect often found in leukaemia patients – without suffering from it.”
The findings are important with respect to the use of DNA tests in hospitals in determining the course of the disease in leukaemia patients. The elderly may be incorrectly evaluated when it comes to leukaemia because they can carry the genetic defect in their blood.
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