How much of frailty in old age is written in our genes?

SIRT6, a DNA repair and metabolism regulator, has been a prime suspect.

A new analysis looked at one rare SIRT6 variant in 227 adults in their sixties to nineties in Iran. 

Frailty affected roughly one in six people in this community cohort.

Carriers of the T version were completely absent in the frail group.

They were also missing among the oldest adults, those in their eighties.

So the story is more complicated than a single protective gene.

When researchers adjusted for age, activity, nutrition, blood pressure and heart disease, the variant did not predict frailty.

What did stand out were familiar levers, especially inactivity and poorer nutrition.

This points us back to basics

Move more

Eat better

Manage cardiovascular risk

Genes matter, but daily habits remain the tools we can design around