and 75 years were recruited from the general population. All controls were free of major diseases and had no family history of longevity. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University Hospital SchleswigHolstein, and all participants provided written informed consent.

The study aimed to investigate the association between a microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP) haplotype and human longevity in the German population. A previous study in the US had identified a haplotype associated with human longevity, but this finding could not be replicated in a French sample. The authors sought to determine whether the MTP haplotype was associated with longevity in a German sample of nonagenarians, centenarians, and matched controls.

The study found no statistically significant differences in MTP haplotype frequency between long-lived individuals and controls. This suggests that the MTP haplotype does not have a noteworthy influence on human longevity in the German population. Moreover, the MTP risk haplotype was found to be overrepresented only in the US controls, indicating that any putative association is more likely to reflect recent changes in the genetic structure of the US Caucasian population as a whole, rather than genetic effects upon survival to old age.

The study highlights potential problems that arise when using a case-control design to map longevity genes in humans. The observed lack of notable haplotype frequency differences in the German sample underscores the particular problems arising from the inherent absence of age-matching in case-control longevity studies.