New and unexpected indicators that predict a long life for people over the age of 70 have been discovered by scientists from Duke and Minnesota universities. And some of them are the mistakes of youth. If they hadn’t made mistakes then, they would have lived longer.
How not to remember here: “If youth knew, if old age could!” Therefore, it is important to know such markers not only for the elderly, but also for the young.
The study was published in the online scientific journal eBioMedicine, part of the Lancet publishing house.
Scientists were helped by accident
The case helped make discoveries. In the 1980s, a study of 1,507 elderly people began. In 1992, when the youngest participants were at least 71, they took blood samples and conducted detailed interviews about their health and habits. Then, for another 27 years, they observed, collecting data on mortality.
Blood samples, questionnaires and other information were stored unused at the US National Institutes of Health. But recently they decided to destroy them. But the information interested Duke University researchers – statins were not widely used at the time, meaning treatment with these drugs could not distort age-related cholesterol levels.
Their goal was to identify simple factors that influence the life expectancy of already elderly people so that they can be used in ordinary medical practice. A total of 186 factors were evaluated, analyzed 2, 5 and 10 years after the blood draw. It was found that only 8-15 factors have true predictive power over such terms and are sometimes very unexpected and simple.
To many it may seem that the evaluation of factors after 2, 5 and 10 years is very insignificant: these time intervals are not very large. In fact, they are very significant: the life expectancy prediction was made in very old people – they were from 71 to 102 years old, and the average age was 78 years.
The average life expectancy was estimated at 9.37 years for men and 10.92 years for women.
The 186 factors the scientists assessed naturally included age, race, sex, education, income, body mass index (BMI), disease, self-reported health, depression, bad habits (smoking, alcohol), cognitive (mental) abilities, physical activity. and many medical blood tests.
Diseases in old age are not the main thing
The most objective predictors of longevity were the ability to remain physically active in everyday life (the ability to go to the store and maintain order in the house by yourself), as well as the preservation of mental abilities. Another very simple and important indicator was tobacco addiction.
Smoking for just 10 years has already had a negative impact on life expectancy in the past. This is exactly the factor that young people should take into account.
Of the tests, it wasn’t bad or total cholesterol, or even good cholesterol in general, that played the most important role, unexpectedly. The most important was one of its fractions: the number of small, high-density lipoprotein particles.
It is they who most actively transfer cholesterol from the walls of blood vessels to the liver, preventing the development of atherosclerosis. Their other useful function is to bind and remove endotoxins that poison the body. This underlines that more attention needs to be paid to the definition of these particles. Unfortunately, this is not always the case in practice.
Great importance was also shown by the GlycA marker, still little known in our country. Its meaning was first discovered only in 2015, its full name is difficult to pronounce and will explain little to the average person. The higher its level, the shorter the life expectancy. This is due to the fact that GlycA indicates the severity of inflammation in the body – it underlies most age-related diseases.
Unexpectedly, diseases such as heart attack, stroke, other heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, hypertension did not play such a significant role in such elderly people in life expectancy over such short distances as 2, 5 or 10 years.
Scientists were very surprised, but they found an explanation. The damage of these diseases is realized through other more important factors, among which they appoint small particles of high-density lipoprotein, the level of GlycA and smoking.
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