Update (October 16): Upon learning that biases in the underlying data accounted for their result, the authors of the study described here have had their paper retracted.
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A study published today (June 3) in Nature Medicine confirms previous reports that a variant of the gene CCR5 that protects against infection by HIV is also associated with an earlier death. Using genetic sequences and vital statistics from hundreds of thousands of people, the team finds that people with two copies of the mutation had a 21 percent higher likelihood of dying by age 76 than those with only one copy or no copies.
“It’s a very interesting study, and it really shows the power of coupling genotyping with large health databases,” says James Riley, a microbiologist working on treating HIV with T-cell engineering at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study. “But ...
