One of the major advantages of the current study is that it used a nested case-control design. This study design selects cases and controls from an ongoing cohort study with longitudinally collected data. Therefore, several phenotypes of interest (e.g., disease prevalence, health status, function) were obtained by direct clinical examination(MGB) Quenchers were used to enhance the detection of assays. The PCR products were measured using the ABI Prism 7000 Sequence Detection System. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: We are grateful to Evelyn Hein, Eva Ardo (PHRI), and Sayaka Mitsuhashi (Okinawa Research Center for Longevity Science, Japan) for their valuable research assistance. This study received support from contract N01-HC-05102 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, contract N01-AG-4-2149, and Grants 5 U01 AG019349-05, R01 AG027060-01 (Hawaii Lifespan Study), K08 AG22788-02 from the National Institute on Aging, and Grant 2004-0463 from the Hawaii Community Foundation. Genotype data were managed through an integrated database system (Microsoft Excel). All positive controls on each genotyping plate were evaluated for consistency. Positive markers were tested for deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Call rates exceeded 98%.