The Future of Human Healthspan Demography, Evolution, Medicine, and Bioengineering: Task Group Summaries (2008) / Chapter Skim
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The Relationship Between Demographic Mortality Rates, Aging, and Functional Human Healthspan
The Relationship Between Demographic Mortality Rates, Aging, and Functional Human Healthspan
Pages 41-48
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From page 41... ...
Such methods might employ human medical data, animal model studies, or a combination of the two. Initial Challenges to Consider Some standard data on human disability and functional status do not show plateaus, apparently, but this may be in part due to small sample sizes at older ages and to the nature of the measures we use.
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From page 42... ...
• To investigate human pathophysiology in late life, do we need functional measures of aggregate aging, for example, performance measures such as walking speed, grip strength, sensory function or cognitive performance, or measures of physiological function? Would other characteristics predictive of mortality also be useful?
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From page 43... ...
Edward Guo, Columbia University • Mary Haan, University of Michigan • Scott Hofer, Oregon State University • Bruce Kristal, Brigham and Women's University • Vikram Kumar, Brigham and Women's Hospital • Kenneth Manton, Duke University • Laurence Mueller, University of California, Irvine • Steven Orzack, Fresh Pond Research Institute • Judith A Salerno, National Institute on Aging • Anatoli Yashin, Duke University • Ken Wachter, University of California, Berkeley • Andrea Anderson, New York University TASK GROUP SUMMARY By Andrea Anderson, Graduate Science Journalism Student, New York University The Gompertz curve, named for British mathematician Benjamin Gompertz, predicts that after a certain age, mortality within a population begins increasing exponentially with advancing age.
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From page 44... ...
Charge to Task Group This task group was charged with devising a plan to address and understand the late-life mortality plateau within the context of human aging and healthspan. This problem raised an interesting set of questions about whether the demographic data represent genuine underlying physiological differences or some sort of statistical artifact.
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From page 45... ...
Published data showing a late plateau in age-specific fecundity in large fruit fly populations suggests there are fundamental biological differences in the latest stages of life. As well, one group member noted that the mortality rate plateau was initially interpreted as evidence for plasticity in lifespan.
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From page 46... ...
In the end, though, the group concluded that late-life mortality plateaus were worth exploring further -- and in their final presentation the group explained their vision of how to tackle the problem. Future Challenges and Recommendations The group concluded that the demographic data suggested potential qualitative differences in late-life biology.
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From page 47... ...
Similarly, by understanding the oldest-old in our population using centenarian studies we might gain a better understanding of the biology, environmental exposures, and/or lifestyles that are incompatible with making it to the ripe old age of 100. As this task group put it, studying centenarians might "tell us where the mines are buried." The group also recommended using numerous animal models to try to gauge the physiological markers of healthspan.
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From page 48... ...
Demography of genotypes: Failure of the limited life span paradigm in Drosophila melanogaster. Science 258(1992)
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