title: How Research on Human Progeroid and Antigeroid Syndromes Can Contribute to the Longevity Dividend Initiative.
abstract: Although translational applications derived from research on basic mechanisms of aging are likely to enhance health spans and life spans for most of us (the longevity dividend), there will remain subsets of individuals with special vulnerabilities. Medical genetics is a discipline that describes such "private" patterns of aging and can reveal underlying mechanisms, many of which support genomic instability as a major mechanism of aging. We review examples of three classes of informative disorders: "segmental progeroid syndromes" (those that appear to accelerate multiple features of aging), "unimodal progeroid syndromes" (those that impact on a single disorder of aging), and "unimodal antigeroid syndromes," variants that provide enhanced protection against specific disorders of aging; we urge our colleagues to expand our meager research efforts on the latter, including ancillary somatic cell genetic approaches.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195 International Registry of Werner Syndrome, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195.
authors.forename: Fuki M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Hisama
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195 International Registry of Werner Syndrome, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195 Department of Medicine, Chiba University, Chiba 260-8670, Japan.
authors.forename: Junko
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oshima
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195 International Registry of Werner Syndrome, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195.
authors.forename: George M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D000015:Abnormalities, Multiple / Q000235:genetics*; D000375:Aging / Q000235:genetics*; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000235:genetics; D035843:Biomedical Research; D030342:Genetic Diseases, Inborn; D042822:Genomic Instability; D006801:Humans; D008136:Longevity; D013577:Syndrome; D014898:Werner Syndrome / Q000235:genetics