Improved cardiovascular profile in Danish centenarians? A comparative study of two birth cohorts born 20 years apart.

Purpose: Cardiovascular health among middle-aged and older people has improved in high-income countries. It is unknown whether this also applies for the oldest-old and if so, is it driven by better treatment or by a health improvement? Therefore, we compared two Danish centenarian birth cohorts born in 1895 and 1915, respectively, to investigate if the cardiovascular profile had improved in the most recent born cohort.

Methods: All individuals turning 100 years old in 1995 and 2015, respectively, were included with participation rates of 74% (n = 106) and 79% (n = 238), respectively.

On some stochastic properties of lives lived and left in non-stationary populations.

First, we revisit the "life lived equals life left" property for stationary populations and discuss it from a more general perspective. Specifically, we show that identically distributed random age and the remaining lifetime in stationary populations have the same distribution as the equilibrium distribution of the renewal theory. Then we consider specific non-stationary populations that are closed to migration and have a constant birth rate.

Diagnosing heart failure in centenarians.

Background: As a consequence of the demographic development with increasing proportion of older people, the prevalence of heart failure (HF) is expected to rise with considerable economic and societal costs. However, knowledge on cardiac structure and function among population-based samples of the exceptional old is lacking.

Methods: Population-based study of all persons (no exclusion criteria) living in the western part of Denmark and turning 100 years in the year 2015.

Declining cancer incidence at the oldest ages: Hallmark of aging or lower diagnostic activity?

Background: The incidence of most cancers increases with age from early adulthood into old age but tends to level off or decrease at the highest ages. This decline may be caused by age-related mechanisms or due to lower diagnostic activity, leaving some cancers undiagnosed at the oldest ages.

Methods: For breast, colon, lung, and all sites except non-melanoma skin cancer, age-specific incidence rates of verified as well as suspected cancer were estimated up to ages 95+ years for a random sample of the Danish population, 1994-2011, based on nationwide health registers (40,008 verified and 9110 suspected cancers).

A revision of the Old World Black Nightshades (Morelloid clade of L., Solanaceae).

The Morelloid clade, also known as the black nightshades or "Maurella" (Morella), is one of the 10 major clades within L. The pantropical clade consists of 75 currently recognised non-spiny herbaceous and suffrutescent species with simple or branched hairs with or without glandular tips, with a centre of distribution in the tropical Andes. A secondary centre of diversity is found in Africa, where a set of mainly polyploid taxa occur.

Complexity of the relationship between life expectancy and overlap of lifespans.

Longevity has long been recognised as a key facilitator of reciprocal altruism because repeated cooperation of partners hinges on mutual survival. Although demographic tools can be used to quantify mutual survival and expected overlapping lifespans, studies on the evolutionary theory of cooperation take only limited advantage of demography. Overlap of lifespans depends on variation in survival across ages and can be high or low independently of high or low life expectancies.

Gender differences in the use of anti-infective medications before and after widowhood: a register-based study.

Background: Recent findings suggest that bereavement due to spousal loss is associated with a decline in general immune functions, and thus to increased susceptibility to infections among widowed individuals. The present study aims to investigate whether spousal loss weakens immune defences more among men than among women using a 5% random sample of the total Danish population, and anti-infective medication use as a proxy for immune response.

Methods: We followed 6076 Danish individuals (67% women) aged ≥50 from 5 years before and up to 5 years after widowhood to examine changes in prescriptions of anti-infectives for systemic use.

Women live longer than men even during severe famines and epidemics.

Women in almost all modern populations live longer than men. Research to date provides evidence for both biological and social factors influencing this gender gap. Conditions when both men and women experience extremely high levels of mortality risk are unexplored sources of information.

No impact of surgery on cognitive function: a longitudinal study of middle-aged Danish twins.

Purpose: To examine the association between exposure to surgery and 10-year change in cognitive functioning.

Methods: Among 2351 middle-aged twins, a 10-year change in composite cognitive scores derived from five cognitive tests was compared between 903 (38%) twins exposed to surgery classified as major, minor, knee and hip replacement, and other, and a reference group of 1448 (62%) twins without surgery, using linear regression models adjusted for socioeconomic factors. Genetic and shared environmental confounding was addressed in intrapair analyses of 48 monozygotic and 74 dizygotic same-sexed twin pairs.

Diet has independent effects on the pace and shape of aging in Drosophila melanogaster.

Studies examining how diet affects mortality risk over age typically characterise mortality using parameters such as aging rates, which condense how much and how quickly the risk of dying changes over time into a single measure. Demographers have suggested that decoupling the tempo and the magnitude of changing mortality risk may facilitate comparative analyses of mortality trajectories, but it is unclear what biologically meaningful information this approach offers. Here, we determine how the amount and ratio of protein and carbohydrate ingested by female Drosophila melanogaster affects how much mortality risk increases over a time-standardised life-course (the shape of aging) and the tempo at which animals live and die (the pace of aging).

Handgrip strength and its prognostic value for mortality in Moscow, Denmark, and England.

Background: This study compares handgrip strength and its association with mortality across studies conducted in Moscow, Denmark, and England.

Materials: The data collected by the Study of Stress, Aging, and Health in Russia, the Study of Middle-Aged Danish Twins and the Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins, and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing was utilized.

Results: Among the male participants, the age-standardized grip strength was 2 kg and 1 kg lower in Russia than in Denmark and in England, respectively.

Senescence is not inevitable.

Senescence, the physiological deterioration resulting in an increase in mortality and decline in fertility with age, is widespread in the animal kingdom and has often been regarded as an inescapable feature of all organisms. This essay briefly describes the history of the evolutionary theoretical ideas on senescence. The canonical evolutionary theories suggest that increasing mortality and decreasing fertility should be ubiquitous.

Religiousness and health in Europe.

Recent research suggests that epidemiological forces in religion and health can have opposed effects. Using longitudinal data of people aged 50+ included in wave 1 (2004-2005) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), and followed up through waves 2 (2006-2007), 4 (2011) and 5 (2013), we examined two forms of religious internalization and their association with health. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to examine all associations.

Improvement in Activities of Daily Living Among Danish Centenarians?-A Comparative Study of Two Centenarian Cohorts Born 20 Years Apart.

Background: With the continued rise in the proportion of the oldest-old in high-income countries, it is of interest to know whether the functional health of today's oldest-olds is better or worse than in previous cohorts. Using two Danish centenarian birth cohorts born 20 years apart we aimed at investigating if the later born cohort had better functioning in terms of activities of daily living (ADL).

Methods: Identification, methodology, and assessment instruments were identical in the 1895-West and 1915-West Birth Cohort Studies: All persons living in the western part of Denmark and turning 100 years old in 1995 and 2015, respectively.

How long do centenarians survive? Life expectancy and maximum lifespan.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the pattern of mortality above the age of 100 years. In particular, we aimed to examine whether Scandinavian data support the theory that mortality reaches a plateau at particularly old ages. Whether the maximum length of life increases with time was also investigated.

Individual heterogeneity determines sex differences in mortality in a monogamous bird with reversed sexual dimorphism.

Sex differences in mortality are pervasive in vertebrates, and usually result in shorter life spans in the larger sex, although the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. On the other hand, differences in frailty among individuals (i.e.

The Rarity of Survival to Old Age Does Not Drive the Evolution of Senescence.

The evolution of senescence is often explained by arguing that, in nature, few individuals survive to be old and hence it is evolutionarily unimportant what happens to organisms when they are old. A corollary to this idea is that extrinsically imposed mortality, because it reduces the chance of surviving to be old, favors the evolution of senescence. We show that these ideas, although widespread, are incorrect.

Better the devil you know: common terns stay with a previous partner although pair bond duration does not affect breeding output.

In a monogamous species two partners contribute to the breeding process. We study pair formation as well as the effect of pair bond length and age on breeding performance, incorporating individual heterogeneity, based on a high-quality dataset of a long-lived seabird, the common tern (Sterna hirundo). To handle missing information and model the complicated processes driving reproduction, we use a hierarchical Bayesian model of the steps that lead to the number of fledglings, including processes at the individual and the pair level.

Early-life mortality risks in opposite-sex and same-sex twins: a Danish cohort study of the twin testosterone transfer hypothesis.

Purpose: To investigate the twin testosterone transfer (TTT) hypothesis by comparing early-life mortality risks of opposite-sex (OS) and same-sex (SS) twins during the first 15 years of life.

Methods: We performed a population-based cohort study to compare mortality in OS and SS twins. We included 68,629 live-born Danish twins from 1973 to 2009 identified through the Danish Twin Registry and performed piecewise stratified Cox regression and log-binomial regression.

Plant-herbivore synchrony and selection on plant flowering phenology.

Temporal variation in natural selection has profound effects on the evolutionary trajectories of populations. One potential source of variation in selection is that differences in thermal reaction norms and temperature influence the relative phenology of interacting species. We manipulated the phenology of the butterfly herbivore Anthocharis cardamines relative to genetically identical populations of its host plant, Cardamine pratensis, and examined the effects on butterfly preferences and selection acting on the host plant.

Changes in Drug Use and Polypharmacy After the Age of 90: A Longitudinal Study of the Danish 1905 Cohort.

Objectives: To determine the longitudinal development of drug use in very old adults.

Design: Longitudinal cohort study with waves in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2005.

Setting: Nationwide study in Denmark.

Blood DNA methylation age is not associated with cognitive functioning in middle-aged monozygotic twins.

The epigenetic clock, also known as DNA methylation age (DNAmAge), represents age-related changes of DNA methylation at multiple sites of the genome and is suggested to be a biomarker for biological age. Elevated blood DNAmAge is associated with all-cause mortality, with the strongest effects reported in a recent intrapair twin study where epigenetically older twins had increased mortality risk in comparison to their co-twins. In the study presented here, we hypothesize that DNAmAge in blood is associated with cross-sectional and longitudinal cognitive abilities in middle-aged individuals.