Jews live long and prosper

Why do some Jews live past 90? The UK Daily Record has the answer:

GENE AIDS THE ELDERLY
A LONGEVITY gene linked to living to 90 or beyond also helps the very old to think clearly.

Researchers in the US examined 158 people of eastern European Jewish descent who were aged 95 or older.

Those who possessed the gene variant were twice as likely to perform well in a standard mental test than those who did not.

Further evidence emerged when the same scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York looked at a younger group of 124 eastern European Jews aged 75 to 85.

Within this group, those who did not go on to develop dementia were five times more likely to have the favourable genotype.

To what extent the gene variant is found in the wider non-Jewish population remains to be discovered.