Researchers used the National Institutes of Health-supported Rochester Epidemiology Project, a database of patient records in Olmsted County, Minn., to find people ages 90 to 99 living on their own or in long-term care. The 121 participants completed an interview, a physical exam and a quality-of-life questionnaire. Participants were divided into groups based on their cognitive function, to sort out the effects of age and disease on well-being, and blood samples were taken for genotyping.<\/p>\n Researchers discovered that those who carried the gene in question, known as ApoE4, were no worse off than others in the study.<\/p>\n “We found if people had good physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being, more social connectedness, and if they perceived themselves to have better coping skills, they felt they had better quality of life<\/strong>,” says co-author Maria Lapid, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist.<\/p>\n “The study shows that the ApoE4 genotype doesn’t determine what your quality of life will be, and that, regardless of your gender, environmental factors play a significant role in your physical, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being,” she says. “You can have good quality of life regardless of this gene.”<\/p>\n The median age of those studied was 93; 87 percent were women. Those reporting poorer quality of life tended to be men, for reasons that are unclear, and people who experienced pain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Mayo Clinic press release via EurekAlert!: A gene linked to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, heart disease and diabetes becomes less important to quality of life once people… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10],"tags":[195,42,178,194,234,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7773,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726\/revisions\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/DNA.jpg\" "\\"DNA\\"")
A gene linked to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, heart disease and diabetes becomes less important to quality of life once people hit their 90s<\/strong>, a Mayo Clinic study shows. At that point, good friends and a positive attitude have a bigger impact<\/strong>, the researchers say. The findings are published this month in the Journal of American Medical Directors Association<\/em>.<\/p>\n