Syracuse

Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans

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Steenstrup, Troels | Kark, Jeremy | Verhulst, Simon | Thinggaard, Mikael | Hjelmborg, Jacob | Dalgård, Christine | Kyvik, Kirsten Ohm | Christiansen, Lene | Mangino, Massimo | Spector, Timothy, D. | Petersen, Inge | Kimura, Masayuki | Benetos, Athanase | Labat, Carlos | Sinnreich, Ronit | Hwang, Shih-Jen | Lévy, Daniel | Hunt, Steven | Fitzpatrick, Annette | Chen, Wei | Berenson, Gerald | Barbieri, Michelangela | Paolisso, Giuseppe | Gadalla, Shahinaz | Savage, Sharon | Christensen, Kaare | Yashin, Anatoliy | Arbeev, Konstantin | Aviv, Abraham

Edité par CCSD ; Impact Journals -

International audience. 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.

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