Determinants of exceptional human longevity: new ideas and findings

Abstract

Studies of centenarians are useful in identifying factors leading to long life and avoidance of fatal diseases. In this article we consider several approaches to study effects of early-life and midlife conditions on survival to advanced ages: use of non-biological relatives as controls, the within-family analysis, as well as a sampling of controls from the same population universe as centenarians. These approaches are illustrated using data on American centenarians, their relatives and unrelated shorterlived controls obtained from the online genealogies. The within-family analysis revealed that young maternal age at person's birth is associated with higher chances of exceptional longevity. Comparison of centenarians and their shorter-lived peers (died at age 65 and sampled from the same pool of online genealogies) confirmed that birth timing in the second half of the calendar year predicts survival to age 100. Parental longevity as well as some childhood and midlife characteristics also proved to be significant predictors of exceptional longevity.

Predictors of Exceptional Longevity: Effects of Early-Life and Midlife Conditions, and Familial Longevity

“…The main focus of the study is on the 1900 and 1930 censuses that correspond to the childhood and adulthood periods of their individual lives. The age at death for controls is selected assuming that the majority of deaths at age 65 occur due to chronic age-related diseases rather than injuries or infectious diseases (Gavrilov and Gavrilova 2013). This design does not suffer from so-called immortal time bias (Ferrie and Ebrahim 2014) because we analyzed past events and conditions when both cases and controls were alive (and of the same age) and did not analyze variables collected at time of death for centenarians and shorter-lived controls.…”

New Developments in the Biodemography of Aging and Longevity

“…We found significant beneficial effects of a young maternal age at a person's birth on survival to age 100 with particularly strong positive influence at a maternal age of 20-24 years [25, 26, 32]. The effect of a young mother was particularly prominent in smaller families [25], which is pertinent today because of the smaller average family size in contemporary population (Figure 2). Thus, the within-family analysis of the paternal-and maternal-age effects on human longevity demonstrated that a young age of the mother increases the chances of children to reach longevity.…”

“…At the same time, early exposure to infections as estimated indirectly from child mortality in the families of cases and controls had no effect on longevity. Overall, childhood conditions reported in the 1900 census were not predictive for exceptional longevity for either men or women [24]. On the other hand, some early-life characteristics (birth in the northeastern part of the United States and birth in the second half of the year) turned out to be significant predictors of exceptional longevity (for men but not women).…”

“…It was found that male gender of centenarians has significant positive effect on the survival of adult male relatives (brothers and fathers), but not of female relatives [24]. A comparison between married siblings and siblings-in-law of centenarians found a strong positive effect of centenarian male gender on the survival of brothers and a weak positive effect of female gender on the survival of centenarian sisters compared to the same-sex siblings-in-law.…”

The 90 plus: longevity and COVID-19 survival

“…Aging is a complex and heterogeneous process, which depends on genetic background and lifestyle [12]. Comparative analysis of twins' age of deaths [13,14] and pedigree studies with longevous families [15][16][17] showed a modest participation of heritability in life span, which favors environmental and lifestyle components [18]. Previous studies have estimated that 20-25% of healthy longevity may rely on our genes' variability and the remainder on the environment [18].…”