Acknowledgments: This work was supported by grants from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to GC, DL, GCR, CC. Funds from the Italian Ministry of Health (Genetic and non-genetic factors of health in elderly) to CF, GP, and GCR are also acknowledged. AC is a PhD student at Pathobiology PhD course (directed by C.C.) of Palermo University, and this work is in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the PhD.

To date, there is only another study on IL-2 )330 G/T polymorphism frequency in aged people (but not in centenarians). The data, obtained comparing young and elderly Irish subjects (Ross et al. 2003), were in agreement with our present findings, showing a not significant increase of T allele frequencies in elderly. So present and previous reports seem to suggest that IL-2 low producer genotype is marginally but not significantly associated with longevity.

References: Bidwell J, Keen L, Gallagher G, Kimberly R, Huizinga T, McDermott MF, Oksenberg J, McNicholl J, Pociot F, Hardt C and DAlfonso S (1999) Cytokine gene polymorphism in human disease: online databases. Genes Immun 1: 319.

On the other hand, our data prompts some consideration on the role that IL-2 plays in John S, Turner D, Donn R, Sinnott P, Worthington J, Oll