Abstract
The risk of dying increases exponentially with age, in humans as well as in many other species. This increase is often attributed to the "accumulation of damage" known to occur in many biological structures and systems. The aim of this paper is to describe a generic model of damage accumulation and death in which mortality increases exponentially with age. The damage-accumulation process is modeled by a stochastic process know as a queue, and risk of dying is a function of the accumulated damage, i.e., length of the queue. The model has four parameters and the main characteristics of the model are: (i) damage occurs at random times with a constant high rate; (ii) the damage is repaired at a limited rate, and consequently damage can accumulate; (iii) the efficiency of the repair mechanism decays linearly with age; (iv) the risk of dying is a function of the accumulated damage. Using standard results from the mathematical theory of queues it is shown that there is an exponential dependence between risk of dying and age in these models, and that this dependency holds irrespective of how the damage-accumulation process is modeled. Furthermore, the ways in which this exponential dependence is shaped by the model parameters are also independent of the details of the damage accumulation process. These generic features suggest that the model could be useful when interpreting changes in the relation between age and mortality in real data. To exemplify, historical mortality data from Sweden are interpreted in the light of the model. The decrease in mortality seen between cohorts born in 1905, compared to those born in 1885, can be accounted for by higher threshold to damage. This fits well with the many advances made in public health during the 20th century.
Highlights
In many biological organisms, including humans, mortality rate is increasing with age [e.g., 1, 2]
The aim of this paper is to describe a family of models of damage accumulation and death, where there is an exponential dependence between rate of dying and age, a dependence that can be shaped by a small set of parameters having a clear interpretation
The model systems introduced accumulate damage and die with a rate that depends on the age of the system
Summary
In many biological organisms, including humans, mortality rate (force of mortality or hazard rate) is increasing with age [e.g., 1, 2]. This increase is often taken as a defining feature of biological aging, or senescence. A remarkable empirical finding, first described almost 200 years ago, is that the rate of increase in mortality, over a substantial age range, is roughly exponential [3]; see [4] and [5] for review. This exponential relationship is found in different populations. There was no additional external funding received for this study
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