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Subjects and IL-10 typing

(9 DNA samples were obtained from 190 centenarians ( 99 = years old, 159 women and 31 men) from north (n 58), = = centre (n 80) and south (n 52) Italy. Women outnum- bered men with a ratio of about 5:1, similar to that expected from previous investigations.42 Age was veri- fied by researching archival records in the City Hall and/or Church registries, paying attention to the con- cordance between reported age and personal chrono- logies (age of marriage and of military service for men, age of first and last pregnancy for women, age of chil- dren, among others). DNAs from 260 (99 women and 161 Ohaet men) 60 years old controls matched for geographical origin were also collected. Written informed consent for enrolling in the study and for personal data management was obtained from all the subjects according to Italian laws. Blood specimens were collected in tripotassium EDTA sterile tubes and immediately stored at − 70° C. Genomic DNA extraction was carried out according to − ° Miller et al44 and stored at 20 C for the IL-10 gene analy- − sis. Three different biallelic polymorphisms at 1082 → − → − → (G A), 819 (C T) and 592 (C A) nucleotides, were identified using the oligotyping hybridisation method- ology of Turner et al23 as previously described.25

Statistical analysis

IL-10 allele frequencies were evaluated by gene count and haplotype frequencies calculated by a maximum likelihood algorithm (Arlequin Software, University of Geneva). The data were tested for the goodness-of-fit aed between the observed and expected genotype values ( 2 test) and their fit to Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. Analy- sis of statistical differences between haplotype fre- quencies in centenarians and controls were evaluated by

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