Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Apr;9(4):1130-1142.
doi: 10.18632/aging.101216.

Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans

Troels Steenstrup  1 , Jeremy D Kark  2 , Simon Verhulst  3 , Mikael Thinggaard  4   5 , Jacob V B Hjelmborg  1   6 , Christine Dalgård  7 , Kirsten Ohm Kyvik  8 , Lene Christiansen  1   5   6 , Massimo Mangino  9   10 , Timothy D Spector  9 , Inge Petersen  1 , Masayuki Kimura  11 , Athanase Benetos  12   13   14 , Carlos Labat  13   14 , Ronit Sinnreich  2 , Shih-Jen Hwang  15 , Daniel Levy  15 , Steven C Hunt  16 , Annette L Fitzpatrick  17 , Wei Chen  18 , Gerald S Berenson  18 , Michelangela Barbieri  19 , Giuseppe Paolisso  19 , Shahinaz M Gadalla  20 , Sharon A Savage  20 , Kaare Christensen  4   5   6 , Anatoliy I Yashin  21 , Konstantin G Arbeev  21 , Abraham Aviv  11
Affiliations

Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans

Troels Steenstrup et al. Aging (Albany NY). 2017 Apr.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: leukocytes; life-expectancy; longevity; maximal lifespan; sex.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: The authors have no conflict of interests to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatter plots and density plots of LTL as a function of age for males and females residing in different countries. Measurements of LTL were performed in the same laboratory on DNA donated by participants in different studies in different countries (Supplemental Table 1). The horizontal dashed lines in the top panels and vertical dashed lines in the bottom panels indicate LTL values of 5 kb. The bottom plots are smoothed histograms obtained by kernel density estimation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Predicted proportion of the composite study population reaching the telomere brink (TB; 5 kb) based on period life table mortality (period), life expectancy of 100 years (LE-100) and LTL attrition. The panels display findings for four age groups: 35 years (range 30-40 years); 50 years (range 45-55 years); 60 years (range 55-65 years); 80 years (range 75-85 years), based on different LTL attrition rates (15-45 bp/year). For period mortality, the proportion (in %) of individuals reaching an LTL of 5 kb before their life expectancy is based on the aggregate mortality data for a given country and sex at the time of blood collection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Predicted proportion of the composite study population of males and females reaching the telomere brink (TB; 5 kb) based on period life table mortality (period), life expectancy of 100 years (LE-100), LTL ranking and LTL attrition. The panels display findings for four age groups: 35 years (range 30-40 years); 50 years (range 45-55 years); 60 years (range 55-65 years); 80 years (range 75-85 years), based on different LTL attrition rates (15-45 bp/year).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Predicted proportion of the composite study population reaching the telomere brink (TB; 5 kb) based on period life table mortality (period), life expectancy of 100 years (LE-100), LTL ranking and LTL attrition. Individuals were ranked by quintiles, where the shortest (1st) LTL quintile is 0-19% and the longest (5th) LTL quintile is 80-99%. The panels display findings for four age groups: 35 years (range 30-40 years); 50 years (range 45-55 years); 60 years (range 55-65 years); 80 years (range 75-85 years), based on different LTL attrition rates (15-45 bp/year).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Driver JA, Djoussé L, Logroscino G, Gaziano JM, Kurth T. Incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer in advanced age: prospective cohort study. BMJ. 2008; 337:a2467. 10.1136/bmj.a2467 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kochanek KD, Xu J, Murphy SL, Miniño AM, Kung HC. Deaths: preliminary data for 2009. Natl Vital Stat Rep. 2011; 59:1–51. - PubMed
    1. D’Mello MJ, Ross SA, Briel M, Anand SS, Gerstein H, Paré G. Association between shortened leukocyte telomere length and cardiometabolic outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis. Circ Cardiovasc Genet. 2015; 8:82–90. 10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000485 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Haycock PC, Heydon EE, Kaptoge S, Butterworth AS, Thompson A, Willeit P. Leucocyte telomere length and risk of cardiovascular disease: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ. 2014; 349:g4227. 10.1136/bmj.g4227 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bakaysa SL, Mucci LA, Slagboom PE, Boomsma DI, McClearn GE, Johansson B, Pedersen NL. Telomere length predicts survival independent of genetic influences. Aging Cell. 2007; 6:769–74. 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2007.00340.x - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

Grants and funding