The researchers, led by Nilesh Samani, a cardiologist at the University of Leicester, and Tim Spector of King's College London, identified a DNA sequence on chromosome three that is more common in people who have telomeres (ends of chromosomes) too short for his age. And they found that 38 percent of the 3,000 European subjects studied had inherited this DNA sequence and had a biological age of three or four years older than those who lacked this genetic variant . What's more, 7 percent, who inherited two copies of the same DNA sequence, were on average six to seven years older, biologically speaking, than the rest.
"There are patients over eighty years of age with high blood pressure but healthy coronary arteries, while others in their forties do not seem to have risk factors but suffer from advanced coronary disease," says Samani, who has published his discovery in the Nature Genetics magazine. According to the cardiologist, the hypothesis is that "this variant has to do with premature aging " of some individuals.
