It was noted a marked reduction in GG homozygotes in male though not female Italian centenarians compared with elderly (60-80 years) and long-lived (80-99 years) subjects. The finding of a decrease in the GG polymorphism in Irish male octo/nonagenarian subjects is intriguing since it appears to confirm in a different study population and with a different study design, the earlier findings obtained in the Italian population (Bonafe et al., 2001). In contrast, Wang et al. (2001), in a study of community living and hospitalized nonagenarians in Finland, detected no significant change in IL-6 frequencies between nonagenarians and 400 healthy blood donors, aged 18-60 years, though a reduction of 2% was noted in GG frequency in comparison with their widely age-selected younger control group. Interestingly, the frequency of the C allele of the IL-6-174 polymorphism appears to vary across Europe: Ireland 0.45 (present study), UK 0.37-0.45 (Fishman et al., 1998; Brull et al., 2001), Finland 0.54 (Wang et al., 2001) and Italy 0.50 (Bonafe et al., 2001), with a report in the USA of 0.39 (Ferrari et al., 2001). Intriguingly, in Asian and African-American populations, the CC homozygotes and heterozygotes are relatively rare (Oisiri et al., 1999; Zhai et al., 2001). It is unclear whether these differences represent true pathological and disease-related pressures on population genotypes or whether they represent methodological differences. However, the trend for a reduction in GG homozygosity in elderly males would seem to be an important and consistent finding which deserves further focused attention and priority study.