Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans

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 natur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Steenstrup, Troels, Kark, Jeremy D., Verhulst, Simon, Thinggaard, Mikael, Hjelmborg, Jacob V. B., 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
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Impact Journals 2017
Materias:
Research Paper
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28394764
http://dx.doi.org/10.18632/aging.101216
Descripción
Sumario: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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