06 / RESEARCH AREAS
Population & lifespan
Patterns across lives, generations and places. Making sense of longevity at scale.
QUESTIONS WE WANT TO UNDERSTAND
What shapes differences in healthspan and lifespan between populations?
How much of an observed association may reflect selection or confounding?
Which conclusions travel across generations and settings?
These questions describe the scope of this area. They are not findings or a list of active studies.
Research in this area
Newest published first
1–12 of 13 articles
Does daily regularity have independent value, or reflect activity and health?
Regularity can describe behavior beyond movement volume, but measurement, prognosis and intervention value are separate questions. In our NHANES reanalysis, RA retains a favorable mortality…
- Measurement and finite identificationStrong
- Conditional mortality associationsModerate
- External prognostic evidenceModerate
- Short interventions and physiologyLimited
- Healthspan and clinical prescriptionsNot yet determinable
How much of lifespan is heritable—and why do estimates differ so much?
There is no universal percentage of an individual's lifespan that is “decided by genes.” Heritability describes variation within a specified population, environment and measurement scale. Estimates…
- Genetic differences in lifespanModerate
- Conditional estimates in historical pedigreesLimited
- Intrinsic lifespan under zero external mortalityLimited
- An individual’s modifiable lifespan or healthspan fractionNot supported
Does Shingles Vaccination Reduce Dementia Risk?
The evidence supports a signal worth testing seriously: eligibility for live shingles vaccination is associated with fewer recorded dementia diagnoses, and birth-date discontinuities make this…
- Live-vaccine eligibility policyModerate
- Receipt and relative efficacyLimited
- Recombinant vaccination in humansLimited
- Disease-mortality signalLimited
- Mechanism, onset and lifespanNot yet determinable
Are Longer Telomeres Always Better? Repair, Replication, and Cancer Risk
Longer telomeres may allow some cells to keep dividing, while also allowing cells that have acquired mutations to persist longer. Assessing whether that change is beneficial requires considering…
- Human genetics and familiesModerate
- Mouse survival and safetyLimited
- Human lifespan benefit in healthy peopleNot yet determinable
Can a blood test measure the age of individual organs?
A blood sample can provide information about organ state and future disease risk. Today's “organ ages,” however, are statistical readouts produced jointly by selected proteins, a model and a…
- Disease-risk associationsModerate
- Organ origin and functionLimited
- Comparability of individual readoutsLimited
- Intervention and life extensionNot yet determinable
Can lowering blood pressure protect cognition?
Randomized trials support benefits for some cognitive outcomes, but fewer cognitive diagnoses, better test performance and prevention of dementia are different findings. Certain blood pressure…
- Clinical cognitive outcomesModerate
- Mean cognitive scoresLimited
- Vascular mechanismsLimited
- Specific safety outcomesModerate
What does menopausal hormone therapy improve? Timing and longevity evidence
Menopausal hormone therapy can relieve some menopausal symptoms and reduce certain fractures. Those benefits do not directly establish slower ageing or longer life. Whether earlier initiation is…
- Arterial imagingModerate
- CognitionModerate
- Disease and composite outcomesModerate
- Overall mortalityModerate
- Observational inferenceLimited
Do species that accumulate mutations more slowly live longer?
In a 2022 comparison of mammalian intestinal crypts, the reported annual somatic substitution rate in mice was about 17 times the human rate. Longer-lived species had lower annual rates. That…
- Cross-species associationModerate
- Lifetime burden and mechanismLimited
- Perturbation and health outcomesLimited
Can treating hearing loss slow cognitive decline?
ACHIEVE did not detect an overall cognitive benefit across its 977 participants over three years, but it found a signal in the prespecified ARIC recruitment subgroup. Three questions need separate…
- Overall RCT cognitionModerate
- Recruitment subgroup and risk enrichmentLimited
- Measurement and retestingLimited
- Disease and pathologyLimited
Why do a few cell families expand in ageing blood?
Some blood-forming cell families expand with age. A rising fraction of sequencing reads carrying a mutation, however, can reflect selection, changes in the blood-forming environment, or measurement…
- Variant trajectories and selectionModerate
- Growth models and predictionLimited
- Detection and life historyLimited
- Clinical riskModerate
- Intervention extrapolationNot yet determinable
Why are some people robust at 70 while others are frail?
Two people can reach 70 with very different health reserves. The frailty index (FI) summarizes part of that difference by adding scores for a set of health deficits and dividing by the number of…
- Index constructionLimited
- FI and mortalityModerate
- Composition at a given scoreLimited
- Temporal validationLimited
Does sleeping too little accelerate aging—and is too much sleep harmful too?
Sleep and mortality studies often show a U-shaped curve: people reporting short or long sleep have higher mortality than those reporting about seven hours. Several explanations fit that pattern…
- Reported sleep and mortalityModerate
- Reverse causation and healthLimited
- Bias simulationLimited
- Intervention and aging rateNot yet determinable