Abstract
As life expectancy continually increases, it is imperative to identify determinants of survival to the extreme end of the lifespan and more importantly to identify factors that increase the chance of survival free of major morbidities. As such, the current study assessed 45 common disease factors as predictors of survival and morbidity-free survival to age 85 years. Within the Rotterdam Study, a population-based cohort, we evaluated morbidity-free participants who were able to attain age 85 within the study duration (n = 2,008). Risk factors were assessed at baseline (1990–1993), and mortality and morbidities were then collected continuously until mortality or the occurrence of their 85th birthday (average time of 7.9 years). Risk factors included demographic and lifestyle variables, health and morbidity indicators and physiological makers. Major morbidities examined included dementia, cancer, cerebrovascular accident, heart failure and myocardial infarction. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that many of the variables were independently predictive for survival and for morbidity-free ageing to 85 years. These included being female, absence of left ventricular abnormalities, stable body weight, unimpaired instrumental activities of daily living, lower C-RP levels and higher levels of femoral neck bone mineral density and albumin. Relative to non-survival, predictors were stronger for morbidity-free survival than for total survival or survival with morbidity. This suggests that lifespan and healthy survival to older age can be relatively well predicted. Understanding predictors of a long and healthy lifespan is vital for developing primary and secondary preventions to help improve the quality of life of older adults and for reducing the financial burden of the rapidly escalating ageing population.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank everyone involved in the data collection process of the Rotterdam study and the inhabitants of Ommoord for their time and effort.
Financial Disclosure
Dr. Newson was supported by a post-doctoral research grant on healthy ageing from Unilever Corporate Research, UK. Professor Witteman is supported by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (VICI 918-76-619). Associate Professor Tiemeier is supported by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (VIDI 017-106-370). The funders had no role in the study design or data collection and analysis.
Competing Interests
The authors declare that there are no competing interests associated with this study.
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Newson, R.S., Witteman, J.C.M., Franco, O.H. et al. Predicting survival and morbidity-free survival to very old age. AGE 32, 521–534 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-010-9154-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-010-9154-8