Department of Biology, Center on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Institute of Public Health, The Danish Aging Research Center, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2020 Jan 20;75(2):333-339. doi: 10.1093/gerona/glz096.
Human life expectancy continues to rise in most populations. This rise not only leads to longer lives but also is accompanied by improved health at a given age, that is, recent cohorts show a reduction of biological age for a given chronological age. Despite or even because of the diversity of biomarkers of aging, an accurate quantification of a general shift in biological age across time has been challenging.
Here, we compared age perception of facial images taken in 2001 over a decade and related these changes in age perception to changes in life expectancy.
We show that age perception changes substantially across time and parallels the progress in life expectancy. In 2012, people aged more than 70 years needed to look 2.3 years younger to be rated the same age as in 2002.
Our results suggest that age perception reflects the past life events better than predicts future length of life, that is, it is written in your face how much you have aged so far. We draw this conclusion as age perception among elderly individuals paralleled changes in life expectancy at birth but not changes in remaining life expectancies. We suggest that changes in age perception should be explored for younger age classes to inform on aging processes, including whether aging is delayed or slowed with increasing life expectancy.
在大多数人群中，人类的预期寿命持续延长。这种增长不仅带来了更长的寿命，而且还伴随着在给定年龄时健康状况的改善，也就是说，最近的队列研究显示，给定的实际年龄对应的生物年龄有所降低。尽管（甚至是因为）衰老生物标志物的多样性，但是准确地量化随时间推移的生物年龄的总体变化一直具有挑战性。
在这里，我们比较了 2001 年拍摄的面部图像的年龄感知，并将这些年龄感知的变化与预期寿命的变化相关联。
我们表明，年龄感知随时间发生了很大变化，并且与预期寿命的进展相吻合。到 2012 年，年龄超过 70 岁的人需要看起来年轻 2.3 岁，才能与 2002 年被评为相同年龄。
我们的研究结果表明，年龄感知比预测未来寿命更好地反映了过去的生活事件，也就是说，你目前的衰老程度已经写在脸上了。我们得出这个结论是因为出生时预期寿命的变化与老年人的年龄感知变化相吻合，但与剩余预期寿命的变化不吻合。我们建议，应该探索年龄感知的变化，以了解年轻年龄组的衰老过程，包括随着预期寿命的延长，衰老是否会延迟或减缓。
