%0 Journal Article
%T Epidemiological, genetic and epigenetic aspects of the research on healthy ageing and longevity
%A Alberto Montesanto
%A Serena Dato
%A Dina Bellizzi
%A Giuseppina Rose
%A Giuseppe Passarino
%J Immunity & Ageing
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1742-4933-9-6
%X In this article we aimed to overview the research on the biological basis of human healthy ageing and longevity, discussing the role of epidemiological, genetic and epigenetic factors in the variation of quality of ageing and lifespan, including the most promising candidate genes investigated so far. Moreover, we reported the methodologies applied for their identification, discussing advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches and possible solutions that can be taken to overcome them. Finally, we illustrated the recent approaches to define healthy ageing and underlined the role that the emerging field of epigenetics is gaining in the search for the determinants of healthy ageing and longevity.The past few decades witnessed a growing social and scientific interest in studies on human ageing and longevity. This interest is primarily due to the social burden connected to the extraordinary increase of the elder population in developed countries, which implies an increase of the subjects which are not autonomous and are affected by invalidating pathologies [1,2]. In Italy, for instance, in 1961 the population aged 65 and older was 4.8 million (9.5% of the total population), while in 1981 this number increased up to 7.5 million (13.2% of the total population) and in 2011 it grew up to 12.3 million (20.3% of the total population). In addition, the population aged 90 and older is growing at a faster pace as it has triplicated in the last 20 years (data from population Census and from http://www.istat.it webcite). Proportionally, life expectancy at birth increased from a medium value of 44 years (44.2 for males and 43.7 for females) in 1905 to more than 80 years (79.4 for males and 84.5 for females) in 2011. Similar figures are reported for all developed countries, while in developing countries life expectancy grows very fast as soon as infant mortality is reduced, with the exception of some areas, namely in Africa, where AIDS infection dramatically affects life
%K Ageing
%K Longevity
%K Genetic variation
%K Epigenetic modifications
%U http://www.immunityageing.com/content/9/1/6