Related Research Articles
A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are below one hundred, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations in 2012 estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide.
The word "longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term longevity is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas life expectancy is always defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth is the same as the average age at death for all people born in the same year. Longevity is best thought of as a term for general audiences meaning 'typical length of life' and specific statistical definitions should be clarified when necessary.
A supercentenarian is a person who has reached the age of 110 years. This age is achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians. Supercentenarians typically live a life free of major age-related diseases until shortly before the maximum human lifespan is reached.
Biogerontology is the sub-field of gerontology concerned with the biological aging process, its evolutionary origins, and potential means to intervene in the process. The term "biogerontology" was coined by S. Rattan, and came in regular use with the start of the journal BIOGERONTOLOGY in 2000. It involves interdisciplinary research on the causes, effects, and mechanisms of biological aging. Biogerontologist Leonard Hayflick has said that the natural average lifespan for a human is around 92 years and, if humans do not invent new approaches to treat aging, they will be stuck with this lifespan. James Vaupel has predicted that life expectancy in industrialized countries will reach 100 for children born after the year 2000. Many surveyed biogerontologists have predicted life expectancies of more than three centuries for people born after the year 2100. Other scientists, more controversially, suggest the possibility of unlimited lifespans for those currently living. For example, Aubrey de Grey offers the "tentative timeframe" that with adequate funding of research to develop interventions in aging such as strategies for engineered negligible senescence, "we have a 50/50 chance of developing technology within about 25 to 30 years from now that will, under reasonable assumptions about the rate of subsequent improvements in that technology, allow us to stop people from dying of aging at any age". The idea of this approach is to use presently available technology to extend lifespans of currently living humans long enough for future technological progress to resolve any remaining aging-related issues. This concept has been referred to as longevity escape velocity.
William John Thoms was a British writer credited with coining the term "folklore" in 1846. Thoms's investigation of folklore and myth led to a later career of debunking longevity myths, and he was a pioneer demographer.
Longevity claims are unsubstantiated cases of asserted human longevity. Those asserting lifespans of 110 years or more are referred to as supercentenarians. Many have either no official verification or are backed only by partial evidence. Cases where longevity has been fully verified, according to modern standards of longevity research, are reflected in an established list of supercentenarians based on the work of organizations such as the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) or Guinness World Records. This article lists living claims greater than that of the oldest living person whose age has been independently verified, Spanish woman Maria Branyas, aged 115 years, 350 days, and deceased claims greater than that of the oldest person ever whose age has been verified, French woman Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days. The upper limit for both lists is 130 years.
This is a list of tables of the oldest people in the world in ordinal ranks. To avoid including false or unconfirmed claims of old age, names here are restricted to those people whose ages have been validated by an international body dealing in longevity research, such as the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) or Guinness World Records (GWR), and others who have otherwise been reliably sourced.
Stuart Jay Olshansky is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago concentrating on biodemography and gerontology and is co-founder and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to life extension:
Blue zones are regions in the world where people are speculated to live longer than average, identified by Gianni Pes, Michel Poulain and Dan Buettner.
The Gerontology Research Group (GRG) based in Los Angeles, California, USA, is a global social science organization of researchers in various fields of gerontology, primarily concerned with verifying and recording supercentenarians.
Leslie Stephen Coles was an American biogerontologist who was the co-founder and executive director of the Gerontology Research Group where he conducted research on supercentenarians and aging. He was also a visiting scholar in the computer science department at the University of California, Los Angeles and an assistant researcher in the Department of Surgery, at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
Thomas Perls is the founding director of the New England Centenarian Study, the longest-running largest study of centenarians and their family members in the world. The Study is worldwide in scope but most of the participants come from the United States and Canada and is funded by three National Institute on Aging grants: The Integrative Longevity Omics Study, Centenarian Project of the Longevity Consortium and the Long Life Family Study. The study is also funded, with great appreciation, by the William M. Wood Foundation and the Paulette and Marty Samowitz Foundation. Born in Palo Alto, California, Perls later moved to Colorado and now lives in Boston. He received his B.A. from Pitzer College in 1982, his M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1986, and his M.P.H. from Harvard University in 1993. Perls is Professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and attending physician in geriatrics at Boston Medical Center. He is the author of over 160 peer-reviewed articles primarily in biodemography and genetics of exceptional human longevity and anti-aging quackery.
Ageing or aging is the process of becoming older. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi, whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biologically immortal. In a broader sense, ageing can refer to single cells within an organism which have ceased dividing, or to the population of a species.
A centenarian is a person who has attained the age of 100 years or more. Research on centenarians has become more common with clinical and general population studies now having been conducted in France, Hungary, Japan, Italy, Finland, Denmark, the United States, and China. Centenarians are the fastest-growing demographic in much of the developed world. By 2030, it is expected that there will be around a million centenarians worldwide. In the United States, a 2010 Census Bureau report found that more than 80 percent of centenarians are women.
Nir Barzilai is the founding director of the Institute for Aging Research, the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging and the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein). He also directs the Longevity Genes Project, a genetics study of over 600 families of centenarians and their children. The participants are all Ashkenazi Jews, a group selected for their genetic homogeneity, which makes it easier to identify significant genetic variations. Barzilai found that many of the centenarians had very high levels of HDL. Barzilai also co-founded of CohBar, Inc., a biotechnology company developing mitochondria based therapeutics to treat diseases associated with aging.
References
- ↑ Keim, Brandon (July 1, 2010). "Genetic Secrets of Living to 100". Wired.com. Retrieved 1 July 2010.
- ↑ Stein, Rob (July 1, 2010). "New study of centenarians links certain genetic variations to a long lifespan". The Washington Post Company. Retrieved 1 July 2010.