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Mortality Partitions and their Relevance to Research on Senescence

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Abstract

The reasons for classifying causes of death into aggregate groups are discussed and the impact of mortality partitions on analyses of mortality is described. Special emphasis is given to a mortality partition that distinguishes between intrinsic causes of death that arise primarily from the failure of biological processes that originate within an organism, and extrinsic causes of death that are primarily imposed on the organism by outside forces. Examples involving mortality data for mice, dogs, and humans are used to illustrate how this mortality partition infuses biological reasoning into mathematical models used to analyze and predict senescent-determined mortality, enhances the information content of the mortality schedules generated from these models, improves mortality comparisons between populations within species separated by time or geographic location, and provides a logical pathology endpoint for making interspecies comparisons of mortality. By bridging biology and the statistics of mortality, a mortality partition based on intrinsic and extrinsic causes of death provides both structure and direction for research on senescent-determined mortality.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation to Dr. Fletcher Hahn from the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute for providing the Instituteȁ9s data on dogs and his advice on pathology issues. We would also like to thank Dr. Douglas Grahn for his insights on the animal studies. Funding for Dr. Carnes was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NAG9-1518) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA, 7 K02 AG000979-06). Drs. Olshansky and Witten were funded by the National Institute on Aging (K02 AG00785-05) and (R01 AG11079 and the Nathan and Ethel Shock Memorial Aging Foundation) respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Reynolds Department of Geriatric Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA

    Bruce A. Carnes

  2. Sielken & Associates Consulting, Inc., Bryan, TX, USA

    Larry R. Holden

  3. School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    S. Jay Olshansky

  4. Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    M. Tarynn Witten

  5. J. Stuart Siegel Demographic Services, North Bethesda, MD, USA

    Jacob S. Siegel

Authors
  1. Bruce A. Carnes
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  2. Larry R. Holden
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  3. S. Jay Olshansky
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  4. M. Tarynn Witten
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  5. Jacob S. Siegel
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Correspondence to Bruce A. Carnes.

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Carnes, B.A., Holden, L.R., Olshansky, S.J. et al. Mortality Partitions and their Relevance to Research on Senescence. Biogerontology 7, 183–198 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-006-9020-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-006-9020-3

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