Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
How long will a baby born today live? 100 years? 120 years? Scientists are studying genes that could mean long life for us.
Recently, there are already so many healthy elderly people that there’s a new term for them: the wellderly.
These are people over 80 who have no diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes.
There have been many studies of communities where a healthy old age is typical. These include places like Calabria in Italy and the island of Okinawa in Japan. The small village of Molochio in Calabria has about 2,000 inhabitants. And of these, there are at least eight centenarians. When researchers ask people like this the secret of their long life, the answer is almost always to do with diet: ‘I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables.’ ‘No smoking, no drinking.’
While in the past, scientists looked at diet and lifestyle as an explanation for longevity, these days they are investigating genetics. One researcher, Eric Topol, says, ‘There must be genes that explain why these individuals are protected from the aging process.’
The new research looks at groups of people who have a genetic connection. For example, in one area of Ecuador, there are a number of people with the same genetic condition. It’s called Laron syndrome, which means that they don’t grow to more than about one metre, but it seems to give them protection against cancer and diabetes. As a result, they live longer than other people in their families.
Back in Calabria, scientists are trying to work out how much of the longevity is due to genetics and to environment. By checking public records since the 19th century and reconstructing the family trees of 202 nonagenarians and centenarians, researchers concluded that there were genetic factors involved. And they seemed to benefit the men more than the women – an astounding result because generally in Europe, there are five times more women centenarians than men.
So what really makes people live longer? It seems likely that it is an interaction of genes, the environment and probably a third factor – luck.
(Adapted from https://www.ngllife.com/long-and-healthy-life-0)
