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Research Paper|Volume 9, Issue 4|pp 1130—1142

Telomeres and the natural lifespan limit in humans

Troels Steenstrup1, Jeremy D. Kark2, Simon Verhulst3, Mikael Thinggaard4,5, Jacob V. B. Hjelmborg1,6, Christine Dalgård7, Kirsten Ohm Kyvik8, Lene Christiansen1,5,6, Massimo Mangino9,10, Timothy D. Spector9, Inge Petersen1, Masayuki Kimura11, Athanase Benetos12,13,14, Carlos Labat13,14, Ronit Sinnreich2, Shih-Jen Hwang15, Daniel Levy15, Steven C. Hunt16, Annette L. Fitzpatrick17, Wei Chen18, Gerald S. Berenson18, Michelangela Barbieri19, Giuseppe Paolisso19, Shahinaz M. Gadalla20, Sharon A. Savage20, Kaare Christensen4,5,6, Anatoliy I. Yashin21, Konstantin G. Arbeev21, Abraham Aviv11
  • 1Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Biodemography, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5000, Denmark
  • 2Epidemiology Unit, Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Jerusalem 91120, Israel
  • 3Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  • 4Department of Clinical Genetics, Odense University Hospital, Odense 5220, Denmark
  • 5Danish Aging Research Center, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5000, Denmark
  • 6The Danish Twin Registry, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5220, Denmark
  • 7Department of Public Health, Environmental Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense C, Denmark
  • 8Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark and Odense Patient Data Explorative Network (OPEN), Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark
  • 9Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, King’s College London, London, UK
  • 10NIHI Biomedical Research Center at Guy’s and St Thomas Foundation Trust, London SE1 9RT, UK
  • 11Center of Human Development and Aging, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ 07103, USA
  • 12Department of Geriatrics, University Hospital of Nancy, F54500, France
  • 13INSERM, U1116, Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, F54500, France
  • 14Université de Lorraine, Nancy, F54000, France
  • 15Population Sciences Branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD and the Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, MA 01702, USA
  • 16Cardiovascular Genetics Division, Department of Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
  • 17Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
  • 18Center for Cardiovascular Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 07118, USA
  • 19Department of Medical, Surgery, Neurologic, Metabolic and Aging Science, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvtelli” 80138 Naples, Italy
  • 20Clinical Genetics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20890, USA
  • 21Biodemography of Aging Research Unit, Social Science Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Received: January 10, 2016Accepted: March 23, 2017Published: April 6, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Steenstrup et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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.