Genetics, lifestyles, evironment and longevity: a look in a complex phenomenon

In the last decades, the worldwide progressive ageing of population has had as a principal consequence to focus attention of researchers on the study of different variables that can help people to age well (1-6). The awareness that ageing is a complex phenomenon, that affects different aspects and dominions of life, has led researchers to analyze it from different points of view (physiological one, psychological one, sociological one and so on). From a functional and a physiological point of view, ageing could be seen as a complex process where something changes. The results of these changes can be a reduction of functional abilities, the quantity of these reduction can vary a lot (7). Nowadays there is a relative agreement between researchers in the findings that genetic and constitutional factors can control about 25%-30% of these changes and of the chance to age well, while other variables, mainly related to lifestyles, can control the remaining 70%-75 (8). What variables are related to these changes and what can be the real level of reduction of functional abilities is perhaps the consequences of the complex interaction between different variables, genetics or constitutional ones, on one side, and behavioral and environmental ones, on the other side. The study of this complex mechanism is the focus of recent studies, mainly aiming to derive specific models of intervention to promote well-being in people who are ageing. A field of specific interest is the study of genetic basis of longevity (6, 8-18). In this paper we will describe and analyze some recent findings in this field, also deriving from the experiences of long-lived people and centenarians (15) which can be a sort of “natural experiment” from which we could derive information about ageing and ageing well. Then, we will discuss some issues for future researches and for intervention.