Research Paper|Volume 8, Issue 7|pp 1364—1374

Genetic variants determining survival and fertility in an adverse African environment: a population-based large-scale candidate gene association study

Jacob J.E. J.E. Koopman¹, Jeroen Pijpe^2,³, Stefan Böhringer⁴, David van van Bodegom^1,⁵, Ulrika K. K. Eriksson¹, Hernando Sanchez-Faddeev², Juventus B. B. Ziem⁶, Bas Zwaan⁷, P. Eline Eline Slagboom⁸, Peter de de Knijff², Rudi G.J. G.J. Westendorp^1,⁹

¹Section of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Department of Internal Medicine, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands
²Department of Human Genetics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands
³University of Applied Sciences Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands
⁴Section of Medical Statistics, Department of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands
⁵Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, Leiden, the Netherlands
⁶Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana
⁷Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands
⁸Section of Molecular Epidemiology, Department of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands
⁹Department of Public Health and Center of Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Received: April 18, 2016Accepted: June 10, 2016Published: June 27, 2016

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100986

Copyright: © 2016 Koopman 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

Human survival probability and fertility decline strongly with age. These life history traits have been shaped by evolution. However, research has failed to uncover a consistent genetic determination of variation in survival and fertility. As an explanation, such genetic determinants have been selected in adverse environments, in which humans have lived during most of their history, but are almost exclusively studied in populations in modern affluent environments. Here, we present a large-scale candidate gene association study in a rural African population living in an adverse environment. In 4387 individuals, we studied 4052 SNPs in 148 genes that have previously been identified as possible determinants of survival or fertility in animals or humans. We studied their associations with survival comparing newborns, middle-age adults, and old individuals. In women, we assessed their associations with reported and observed numbers of children. We found no statistically significant associations of these SNPs with survival between the three age groups nor with women's reported and observed fertility. Population stratification was unlikely to explain these results. Apart from a lack of power, we hypothesise that genetic heterogeneity of complex phenotypes and gene-environment interactions prevent the identification of genetic variants explaining variation in survival and fertility in humans.