We’re living longer but 125 years is the most likely limit, say researchers

Biologists and demographers have it wrong, say geneticists – there’s nothing to show the maximum human lifespan can go on rising. In other news: study reveals no long-term benefits from wearing fitness trackers

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Human lifespans have steadily increased, but they have their limit, research shows. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00am, 6 Oct 2016Updated: 5:47pm, 10 Oct 2016

Maximum human lifespan has already been reached

People are living longer than ever – and will continue to do so – but the maximum lifespan for humans will soon be reached, a study published online in the journal Nature shows. That ceiling is 125 years, according to scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. The oldest person on record was 122-year-old Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997.

“Demographers and biologists have contended there is no reason to think that the ongoing increase in maximum lifespan will end soon,” says senior author Jan Vijg, professor and chair of genetics at the college. “But our data strongly suggest that it has already been attained and that this happened in the 1990s.”

Jan Vijg, professor and chair of genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Photo: Courtesy Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Vijg and colleagues analysed data from the Human Mortality Database, which compiles mortality and population data from more than 40 countries (China is not part of this). Since 1900, those countries have shown a continuing increase in average life expectancy. But gains in longevity peaked at about 100 years and then declined rapidly, regardless of the year people were born.

Looking at data from the International Database on Longevity, the researchers focused on people verified as living to age 110 or older between 1968 and 2006 in the US, France, Japan and the UK – the four countries with the largest number of long-lived individuals. Age at death for these supercentenarians increased rapidly between the 1970s and early 1990s, but reached a plateau about 1995.