Blagosklonny Mikhail V
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY 14263, USA.
Oncoscience. 2021 Dec 1;8:110-119. doi: 10.18632/oncoscience.547. eCollection 2021.
Although average human life expectancy is rising, the maximum lifespan is not increasing. Leading demographers claim that human lifespan is fixed at a natural limit around 122 years. However, there is no fixed limit in animals. In animals, anti-aging interventions (dietary restrictions, rapamycin, genetic manipulations) postpone age-related diseases and thus automatically extend maximum lifespan. In humans, anti-aging interventions have not been yet implemented. Instead, by treating individual diseases, medical interventions allow a patient to live longer (despite morbidity), expanding morbidity span. In contrast, slowly aging individuals (centenarians) enter very old age in good health, but, when diseases finally develop, they do not receive thorough medical care and die fast. Although the oldest old die from age-related diseases, death certificates often list "old age", meaning that diseases were not even diagnosed and even less treated. The concept of absolute compression of morbidity is misleading in humans (in truth, there is no other way to compress morbidity as by denying thorough medical care) and false in animals (in truth, anti-aging interventions do not condense morbidity, they postpone it). Anti-aging interventions such as rapamycin may potentially extend both healthspan and maximal lifespan in humans. Combining anti-aging medicine with cutting-edge medical care, regardless of chronological age, will extend maximal lifespan further.
尽管人类的平均预期寿命在不断提高，但最长寿命并未增加。主流人口统计学家称，人类寿命固定在122岁左右的自然极限。然而，动物并没有固定的寿命极限。在动物中，抗衰老干预措施（饮食限制、雷帕霉素、基因操作）可延缓与年龄相关的疾病，从而自动延长最长寿命。在人类中，抗衰老干预措施尚未实施。相反，通过治疗个别疾病，医疗干预措施能让患者活得更长（尽管仍有疾病缠身），从而延长带病生存期。相比之下，衰老缓慢的个体（百岁老人）在健康状态下进入高寿阶段，但当疾病最终出现时，他们得不到全面的医疗护理，很快就会死亡。尽管最年长的老人死于与年龄相关的疾病，但死亡证明上往往写的是“年老”，这意味着疾病甚至都未被诊断出来，更不用说得到治疗了。发病率绝对压缩的概念在人类中具有误导性（实际上，除了拒绝全面医疗护理，没有其他方法可以压缩发病率），在动物中则是错误的（实际上，抗衰老干预措施并不会缩短发病期，而是会推迟发病期）。雷帕霉素等抗衰老干预措施可能会延长人类的健康期和最长寿命。将抗衰老医学与前沿医疗护理相结合，无论实际年龄如何，都将进一步延长最长寿命。
