2025/01/01 by Myriam Rahmouni, Cristina Giuliani, Daniela Colucci +17 · 1 voice
Immunology and Microbiology · #Atherosclerosis and Cardiovascular Diseases
paper · pdf · doi:10.14336/ad.2025.1109
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In our recent research on AIDS Elite controllers, we demonstrated that the HLA-B*57:01 allele is part of an extensive MHC haplotype associated with impaired MICA/MICB function. Considering the pivotal role of natural killer (NK) cells and innate immunity in fighting cancer and infectious diseases, we investigated whether this allele could also influence human longevity. To this end, we performed a multinational European study including 2,597 centenarians and 9,973 controls. We found that HLA-B*57:01 was consistently less frequent in the European centenarian cohorts compared with the corresponding controls (OR ≈ 0.68, p &;lt 0.0005). These findings provide the first in vivo genetic evidence that innate immunity and NK cell function are key components of human longevity.