An Application of a General Branching Process in the Study of the Genetics of Aging

✍ Scribed by PETER OLOFSSON; OTTO SCHWALB; RANAJIT CHAKRABORTY; MAREK KIMMEL

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 267 KB
• Volume: 213
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2435

✦ Synopsis

A general branching process model is developed to analyse familial dependence in longevity data. A general formula for the survival function of a randomly chosen sibling of an individual of a speci"ed age is derived. The branching process model takes into account that siblings' ages may be censored. This is applied to a data set consisting of lifelengths of siblings of centenarians. Age distributions used in the branching process model are estimated from US Census data from the relevant period. It is demonstrated that there is a marked di!erence in the survival function according to the formula assuming no familial e!ect and the empirical survival function estimated from the data; thus, indicating a strong familial component.