Centenarians’ delay or avoid major diseases, rather than surviving them
A new study published in the journal Geroscience has investigated whether centenarians reach old age by surviving, delaying or even avoiding disease. By following individuals born in the same year from the age of 60 onwards, the researchers were able to track the disease patterns of those who died early and late in life.
They found that centenarians had lower disease risks at all ages and for almost all diseases studied. Despite living longer, their lifetime risks for all diseases except hip fracture were lower than those of shorter-lived people. For example, the average lifetime risk of heart attack for centenarians was 12.5%, compared with around 23% for those with an average life expectancy. This suggests that centenarians are delaying and even avoiding many of the major age-related diseases rather than surviving them to a greater extent.
- Our research shows that centenarians not only exhibit lower rates of disease at younger ages compared to their shorter-lived peers, but throughout their lives. This challenges the notion that longer life expectancy inevitably leads to higher disease rates or that diseases are simply shifted to older ages, says Karin Modig, one of the lead authors of the study.
Publication
Do people reach 100 by surviving, delaying, or avoiding diseases? A life course comparison of centenarians and non-centenarians from the same birth cohorts.
Zhang Y, Murata S, Schmidt-Mende K, Ebeling M, Modig K
Geroscience 2024 Aug;():