Research Paper|Volume 1, Issue 8|pp 714—722

Human insulin/IGF-1 and familial longevity at middle age

Maarten P. Rozing¹, Rudi G.J. Westendorp^1,², Marijke Frölich³, Anton J.M. de Craen¹, Marian Beekman⁴, Bastiaan T. Heijmans⁴, Simon P. Mooijaart¹, Gerard-Jan Blauw¹, P. Eline Slagboom⁴, Diana van Heemst¹, on behalf of the Leiden Longevity Study (LLS) Group

¹Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Leiden University Medical Center, 2300 RC, Leiden, the Netherlands
²Netherlands Consortium for Healthy Ageing (NCHA)
³Department of Clinical Chemistry, Leiden University Medical Center, 2300 RC, Leiden, the Netherlands
⁴Department of Molecular Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands

Received: May 20, 2009Accepted: July 22, 2009Published: July 24, 2009

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100071

Copyright: © 2009 Rozing et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Recently, we have shown that compared to controls, long-lived familial nonagenarians (mean age: 93.4 years) from the Leiden Longevity Study displayed a lower mortality rate, and their middle-aged offspring displayed a lower prevalence of cardio-metabolic diseases, including diabetes mellitus. The evolutionarily conserved insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) pathway has been implicated in longevity in model organisms, but its relevance for human longevity has generated much controversy. Here, we show that compared to their partners, the offspring of familial nonagenarians displayed similar non-fasted serum levels of IGF-1, IGFBP3 and insulin but lower non-fasted serum levels of glucose, indicating that familial longevity is associated with differences in insulin sensitivity.