Increased education is associated with a longer lifespan, and certain genetic variants are associated with educational attainment.

Researchers tested whether these education-linked genetic variants are also associated with longevity. The authors created a polygenic score that quantified an individual’s genetic propensity for educational attainment based on data from a genome-wide association study.

Using data from three cohort studies comprising more than 130,000 participants in the United Kingdom and Estonia, the authors compared participants’ polygenic scores for education to the age of the participants’ parents at death.

Previous studies have revealed a correlation between parental and offspring longevity; parental lifespan is therefore a proxy for the participants’ own life expectancies. In the current study, higher polygenic scores for education were associated with longer parental lifespans across all three cohort studies.

Individuals with polygenic scores in the upper third of the distribution had parents who lived more than 6 months longer on average than those with scores in the lower third of the distribution. According to the authors, the results suggest an underlying genetic basis for the association between education and longevity. 

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/10/25/1605334113