What is a healthy aging individual?
Healthy aging individual is defined as disease-free aging individual aged 80 years or more, without medical interventions (Erikson GA et al. Cell. 2016;165:1002–11) .
What is unique about i-DHANS database?
i-DHANS is the first Indian exome database for healthy aging individuals with a mean age 80 years. This database will help to identify the disease or protective genes for particular conditions.
Why is the age of the study individuals 80 years and above?
The disease-free aging individuals aged 80 years or more, without medical interventions might hold disease resistant or protective genetic material. This might provide new insights in comparing and filtering genetic markers for different diseases and addressing the most critical aspect of understanding the genetics of healthy aging Indian.
Why is the sample size small?
The sample size is less because of the stringent selection criteria. Unlike other databases, all the study participants are aged 80 years and above and clinically evaluated negatively for infectious diseases and other primary chronic disease conditions including cardiovascular, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cancer, and brain-related disorders.
How do I confirm the study individuals are from India?
We have confirmed the Indian ancestral origin of the study cohort by using 50 informative ancestral markers and performing a principal component analysis (Dhandapany PS et al. Nat Genet. 2009;41(2):187-91.) .
This underrepresentation of different ethnic populations:
1. Fail to give comprehensive data on human diseases
2. May lead to lack of meaningful translation of genetic data into clinical output
3. May mislead public health policies
4. Underestimate a particular disease risk. For example - a 25 bp deletion in MYBPC3 which is a risk factor for heart failure, is exclusively present in South Asians
5. May lead to missing of identification of homozygous mutations due to consanguinity
i-DHANS addresses the above gaps by providing:
a. Genetic dataset of Indian healthy aging individuals
b. Filtering platform for identifying pathological gene mutation for all diseases
c. List of healthy aging-associated genes that could help in developing new therapies that might help people to live a longer and healthier life
If you want to participate in this project free of cost:
Please contact: +919483288866 or consdhan at gmail dot com