Analysis of Human Mortality Data at Extreme Old Age from the International Database on Longevity

Very old flies cease to age, at least under the definition of aging as the rise of mortality rate with age. Very old flies have a high mortality rate, but that rate plateaus. There has been some back and forth over the years as to whether such a late life plateau in mortality rates can be observed in humans. Presently the consensus is that it is not apparent. It is, however, challenging to draw any robust conclusions on human mortality past the age of 110, as there are so very few survivors to that late stage of life. All of this is fascinating from a scientific point of view, but something of a sideshow when it comes to the treatment of aging as a medical condition. Earnest therapies for aging are needed at half the age of interest here, and given good approaches to repair the underlying damage of aging, it becomes somewhat irrelevant as to what happens when those therapies are not used. The validity of conclusions about mortality at extreme age depends crucially on the quality of the data on which they are based, as age misrepresentation for the very old is common even in countries with otherwise reliable statistical data. Motivated by this, demographic researchers from 13 countries contribute to the International Database on Longevity (IDL), the third (August 2021) release of which contained 1119 individually validated life lengths of supercentenarians, i.e. those reaching age 110 or more; the data, which cover different time periods for different countries, can b...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs