Learn for longevity

In a new twist on the link between education and health — and arguments over whether it reflects nature or nurture — researchers have found that people with a genetic predisposition to learn are also inherently programmed for long life. An analysis of about 130,000 participants in three European biobanks has concluded that people with genetic variants associated with educational achievement tend to have longer living parents, and can therefore expect longer lives themselves.

The study, reported yesterday in the journal PNAS, brought together disparate but associated findings from over a decade of research: more educated people tend to be more healthy, wealthy, socially mobile and long-living than their less educated counterparts. Researchers have also identified genetic variants associated with educational attainment. The new study investigated whether such variants directly influenced “arguably the most important life outcome of all: longevity”.
The study, led by epidemiologists from the University of Edinburgh, crunched data from about 115,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank, 6000 from the Estonian Biobank and 17,000 from the university’s “Generation Scotland” tissue bank. The researchers created a “polygenic score” based on 74 genetic locations previously linked with educational attainment, and compared participants’ scores with the age of their parents when they died.