IL6 and cancer: First we analyzed whether common risk factors such as age, BMI, micro-inflammation (presented as IL-6 levels), smoking, and hypertension are associated with aging-related diseases in our cohort of elderly Caucasians by comparison of healthy subjects without any aging-related disease (n = 517), and subjects suffering from one or more aging-related diseases (n = 1027), e.g. CVD (n = 496), cancer (n = 93), lung disease (n = 254), DMT 2 (n = 122), and cognitive impairment (n = 406).