Complement factor H 402His variant confers an increased mortality risk in Finnish nonagenarians: The Vitality 90+ study

Abstract

Ageing is characterized by chronic low-grade inflammation and the expected lifespan may be affected by several immunological and inflammatory mediators. In this study, we investigated whether the functional Tyr402His polymorphism (rs1061170) on complement factor H (CFH) gene, which is a key inflammatory downregulator, modulates the longevity of 491 nonagenarians in the Vitality 90+ study. Logistic regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier method with the log rank test were used to examine the effect of the CFH Tyr402His polymorphism on 4-year mortality. After follow-up, we observed that risk factor-adjusted mortality was significantly higher among the carriers of CFH 402His allele compared to non-carriers (OR 1.78, 95% CI 1.19-2.67, p = 0.005) and that the survival curves of CFH 402His carriers and non-carriers deviated significantly (p = 0.016). We propose that the increased mortality is inflammation-related and mediated by aberrant complement regulation by the CFH 402His variant. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.