Browsing by Author "Kyvik, Kirsten Ohm"

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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.
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    The Danish Twin Registry: linking surveys, national registers, and biological information.
    (Twin Res Hum Genet, 2013-02) Skytthe, Axel; Christiansen, Lene; Kyvik, Kirsten Ohm; Bødker, Frans L; Hvidberg, Lars; Petersen, Inge; Nielsen, Morten MF; Bingley, Paul; Hjelmborg, Jacob; Tan, Qihua; Holm, Niels V; Vaupel, James W; McGue, Matt; Christensen, Kaare
    Over the last 60 years, the resources and the research in the Danish Twin Registry (DTR) have periodically been summarized. Here, we give a short overview of the DTR and a more comprehensive description of new developments in the twenty-first century. First, we outline our experience over the last decade of combining questionnaire and survey data with national demographic, social, and health registers in Statistics Denmark. Second, we describe our most recent data collection effort, which was conducted during the period 2008-2011 and included both in-person assessments of 14,000+ twins born 1931-1969 and sampling of biological material, hereby expanding and consolidating the DTR biobank. Third, two examples of intensively studied twin cohorts are given. The new developments in the DTR in the last decade have facilitated the ongoing research and laid the groundwork for new research directions.