Superagers are a group of people age 80 or older with episodic memory at least as good as adults 20 or 30 years younger.Why superagers have exceptional memory still isn't clear after two decades of research.This study showed that inherited Alzheimer's risks didn't differ between superagers and cognitively average controls, suggesting genes alone do not account for differences.
Exceptional memory at age 80 and beyond was not due simply to good genes, an analysis of prospective data suggested.
The study assessed outcomes for superagers -- people 80 or older with episodic memory at least as good as adults 20 or 30 years younger -- and cognitively average controls.
Genotype distributions and APOE status did not differ between groups, reported Ignazio Stefano Piras, PhD, of the Translational Genomics Research Institute at City of Hope in Phoenix, and co-authors.
Neither APOE nor any of three polygenic risk scores predicted whether a person would be a superager, Piras and colleagues wrote in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy. Results were similar after accounting for global non-European or African ancestry.
