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In conclusion, the present study shows that the i1-C/T, L1074F and C1367R variations in the WRN gene do not influence the sensitivity or resistance to the development of age related disorders and the course of aging.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an IOP grant (Innovative Orientated Research) from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (grant number IGE0101 14), and by the Centre for Medical Systems Biology (CMSB), which is a centre of excellence approved by the Netherlands Genomics Initiative/ Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The study was also supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship of the European Community programme EUROGENDIS ‘‘The Genetic Basis of Disease’’ for Maris Kuningas, under contract number QLGA-GH-00-60005-59.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.mad.2005.11.005.

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