Aging populations face diminishing quality of life due to increased disease and morbidity. These challenges call for longevity research to focus on understanding the pathways controlling healthspan. A new study, led by dr. Peter Fedichev (Gero LLC) and prof. Yurii Aulchenko (PolyOmica), used the data from the UK Biobank to understand biology of healthspan¹.

We observed that the risks of major chronic diseases is doubling every 8 years. Assuming that aging drives the acceleration in morbidity rates, we build a risk model to predict the age at the end of healthspan depending on age, gender, and genetic background. We identify 12 loci associated with healthspan at the whole-genome significance level and find strong genetic correlations between healthspan and all-cause mortality, life-history, and lifestyle traits (see Figure).