Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans.
Abstract
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.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14745Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.18632/aging.101216Publication Info
Steenstrup, Troels; Kark, Jeremy D; Verhulst, Simon; Thinggaard, Mikael; Hjelmborg,
Jacob VB; Dalgård, Christine; ... Aviv, Abraham (2017). Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans. Aging (Albany NY), 9(4). pp. 1130-1142. 10.18632/aging.101216. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14745.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Konstantin Arbeev
Associate Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute
Konstantin G. Arbeev received the M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State
University (branch in Ulyanovsk, Russia) in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree in Mathematics
and Physics (specialization in Theoretical Foundations of Mathematical Modeling, Numerical
Methods and Programming) from Ulyanovsk State University (Russia) in 1999. He was
a post-doctoral fellow in Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock
(Germany) before moving to Duke University in 2004 to work as a Resea
Anatoli I. Yashin
Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute
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