Fountain of youth. (updates).(Brief Article)

Scientists in Iceland claim they have located a gene responsible for healthy old age.

Biotechnologists at deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, announced in June that they had isolated the "Methuselah gene," which they believe could lead to the development of drugs enabling people to live longer. The gene was named after the biblical figure said to have lived for 969 years.

Researchers identified the gene by using Iceland's uniquely comprehensive family records to compare 1200 people who had lived beyond age 90 with a similar number people with average life spans. They found those who lived longer were much more closely related than the other group.

"Our tight heritage and records are ideal for this sort of work. We have the same genes as everyone else on the planet, but because we have a small, tight population of only 270,000, it is much easier to pinpoint those of us who carry genes that have interesting functions," says Kari Stefansson, MD, the president of deCODE.

"We compared a group of about 1,200 long-lived people with a similar group who had lived to an average age and found that, yes, people in the long-lived group were more closely related to each other than people in the control group," Stefansson says.

DeCODE's work follows research published in August 2001 in the scientific journal Proceedings ...