Browsing by Author "Hjelmborg, Jacob VB"

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    Cancer and longevity--is there a trade-off? A study of cooccurrence in Danish twin pairs born 1900-1918.
    (J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci, 2012-05) Christensen, Kaare; Pedersen, Jacob K; Hjelmborg, Jacob VB; Vaupel, James W; Stevnsner, Tinna; Holm, Niels V; Skytthe, Axel
    BACKGROUND: Animal models and a few human studies have suggested a complex interaction between cancer risk and longevity indicating a trade-off where low cancer risk is associated with accelerating aging phenotypes and, vice versa, that longevity potential comes with the cost of increased cancer risk. This hypothesis predicts that longevity in one twin is associated with increased cancer risk in the cotwin. METHODS: A total of 4,354 twin pairs born 1900-1918 in Denmark were followed for mortality in the Danish Civil Registration System through 2008 and for cancer incidence in the period 1943-2008 through the Danish Cancer Registry. RESULTS: The 8,139 twins who provided risk time for cancer occurrence entered the study between ages 24 and 43 (mean 33 years), and each participant was followed up to death, emigration, or at least 90 years of age. The total follow-up time was 353,410 person-years and, 2,524 cancers were diagnosed. A negative association between age at death of a twin and cancer incidence in the cotwin was found in the overall analyses as well as in the subanalysis stratified on sex, zygosity, and random selection of one twin from each twin pair. CONCLUSIONS: This study did not find evidence of a cancer-longevity trade-off in humans. On the contrary, it suggested that longevity in one twin is associated with lower cancer incidence in the cotwin, indicating familial factors associated with both low cancer occurrence and longevity.
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    Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans.
    (Aging (Albany NY), 2017-04) Steenstrup, Troels; Kark, Jeremy D; Verhulst, Simon; Thinggaard, Mikael; Hjelmborg, Jacob VB; Dalgård, Christine; Kyvik, Kirsten Ohm; Christiansen, Lene; Mangino, Massimo; Spector, Timothy D; Petersen, Inge; Kimura, Masayuki; Benetos, Athanase; Labat, Carlos; Sinnreich, Ronit; Hwang, Shih-Jen; Levy, Daniel; Hunt, Steven C; Fitzpatrick, Annette L; Chen, Wei; Berenson, Gerald S; Barbieri, Michelangela; Paolisso, Giuseppe; Gadalla, Shahinaz M; Savage, Sharon A; Christensen, Kaare; Yashin, Anatoliy I; Arbeev, Konstantin G; Aviv, Abraham
    An ongoing debate in demography has focused on whether the human lifespan has a maximal natural limit. Taking a mechanistic perspective, and knowing that short telomeres are associated with diminished longevity, we examined whether telomere length dynamics during adult life could set a maximal natural lifespan limit. We define leukocyte telomere length of 5 kb as the 'telomeric brink', which denotes a high risk of imminent death. We show that a subset of adults may reach the telomeric brink within the current life expectancy and more so for a 100-year life expectancy. Thus, secular trends in life expectancy should confront a biological limit due to crossing the telomeric brink.