The issue of the feasibility of a general theory of aging. III. Theory and practice of aging

Abstract

Analysis of demographic data on human mortality and lifespan carried out according to the com plete Gompertz-Makeham model μ = C + λe γxt shows that, over the last 100 years, the life expectancy increased almost exclusively because the Makeham parameter C decreased. The observed changes in the demographic aging rate γ and in the initial vitality, which is inversely proportional to lnλ, may be largely an artifact of the attempts to decompose mortality data related to conditions that significantly change within a time scale comparable to the human lifespan, whereas the correct decomposition of mortality change by dif ferent Gompertz-Makeham parameters is possible only for a strictly homogeneous population under strictly stationary conditions. What actually remains of changes in these parameters, while theoretically significant, would probably be negligible in the quantitative practical aspect. The comparison of this situation with exper iments on animals, suggesting possible interferences that may decrease the aging rate and/or increase the lifespan, reveals that the main factors of reduced mortality and, correspondingly, increased lifespan in human beings are limited to one's personal commitment to following long standing and readily available guidelines for healthy life, which may help bring one's lifespan about 10 years closer to the reliably recorded maximum of 122 years, although they obviously do not guarantee it. The bottleneck for the realization of this reserve resides in public and individual mentality rather than in science.

Frailty, depression, and anxiety in later life

“…It is known that the accumulation of deficits has both an age-independent (background) component and an agedependent (exponential) component, akin to the well-known Gompertz-Makeham model for the risk of mortality [19], a generalised form of which is interpreted as a law of the dependency of mortality upon 'vitality' rather than on age [20].…”

COVID-19: A Challenge to Physiology of Aging

“…0.3%. CFR estimates derived from a similar plot presented in (Golubev and Sidorenko, 2020) are 0.2% for Spain as of 23 March, 0.4 for Spain as of 11 May, and 0.75 for Sweden and Italy (13 May). These up to 3.5-fold differences in CFR are proportional to differences in f 0 , which thus may be quite appreciable when different countries and epidemic stages are compared.…”

“…Amidst the resulting tumult, a fairly stable character of the pandemic has been recognized (Golubev and Sidorenko, 2020;Guilmoto, 2020;Promislow, 2020;Santesmasses et al, 2020): in different countries and at different stages of the epidemic there, COVID-19 patients at ages (a) ranging from 30 to 80 years feature an exponential pattern of increase in mortality rate (case fatality rate, CFR = f ) upon increasing a: f (a) = f 0 × e Y×a or ln f (a) = ln f 0 + Y × a…”

A Tale of Two Concepts: Harmonizing the Free Radical and Antagonistic Pleiotropy Theories of Aging

“…To extend this observation further, it may be noted that the roughly twofold increase in human lifespan over the last century is almost completely attributable to a decrease in C (Fig. 5A), whereas small changes in l and g are such that a decrease in l is associated with an increase in g, making these parameters negatively correlated [ (30,38,42,124) and references therein].…”