AKEA study
DEAKEA-Studie
The AKEA study is the 2004 paper that first drew the Sardinian "blue zone". AKEA is not an acronym but the Sardinian toast "A kent'annos", may you live to a hundred. Michel Poulain, Gianni Pes and colleagues listed everyone born between 1880 and 1900 in Sardinia's municipalities and checked each claimed age of 100 against birth, baptism and military records. Instead of counting living centenarians, they used the extreme longevity index (ELI): the share of a birth cohort that reached 100. The index peaked in a cluster of mountain villages in the province of Nuoro, Ogliastra and Barbagia, where the ratio of women to men among centenarians was 1.35 against 2.43 in the rest of the island. The villages were marked in blue ink on a map, hence the name. Dan Buettner later trademarked "Blue Zones" and extended the list to Okinawa, Nicoya, Ikaria and Loma Linda. The AKEA cohorts were born before 1900. Whether the pattern persists in later generations is the open question, and it is a cohort question rather than a geographic one.
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Sources
- Poulain M, Pes GM, Grasland C, Carru C, Ferrucci L, Baggio G, Franceschi C, Deiana L. (2004). Identification of a geographic area characterized by extreme longevity in the Sardinia island: the AKEA study. *Experimental Gerontology*doi:10.1016/j.exger.2004.06.016
- Poulain M, Herm A. (2024). Exceptional longevity in Okinawa: Demographic trends since 1975. *Journal of Internal Medicine*doi:10.1111/joim.13764