Lifespan Disparity Research Articles

The contribution of avoidable mortality to life expectancy differences and lifespan disparities in the European Union: a population-based study

Twenty years after the 2004 European Union (EU) enlargement, life expectancy differences between established (EMS) and new member states (NMS) remain large. Contributing to this gap are deaths that can be avoided through preventive services or adequate medical treatment. We estimate the impact of reducing avoidable mortality on life expectancy and lifespan disparities in the enlarged EU. Using World Health Organization mortality database data, we analysed the potential of reducing avoidable mortality, as defined by Eurostat and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, to close themortality gap between NMS and EMS. We decomposed the changes in life expectancy and lifespan disparity by age and cause using linear integral decomposition. Averting all avoidable deaths across the EU from 2005 to 2019 would decrease the average life expectancy gap from 5.8 to 2.4 years in men and 3.3-2 years in women and eliminate the lifespan disparity gap. Had NMS achieved the average EMS avoidable mortality rates during the same period, the average life expectancy gap would have been reduced to 1.8 years in men and 1.6 years in women, and the lifespan disparities gap would have been reversed. Avoidable circulatory and injury-related deaths in middle and older age drove the observed mortality changes. Our results suggest that the gap in life expectancy and lifespan disparity across the EU could be reduced by strengthening health systems and investing in averting circulatory and injury-related deaths in middle and older age in NMS. None.

The Lifespan Disparity Dataset: An open repository on inequality and polarization in length of life (1950–2021)

Monitoring health is key for identifying priorities in public health planning and improving healthcare services. Life expectancy has conventionally been regarded as a valuable indicator to compare the health status of different populations. However, this measure is simply the mean of the distribution of the length of life and, as such, neglects individual disparities in health outcomes. In this paper, we use life tables from the UN World Population Prospects to develop the most comprehensive dataset of lifespan inequality and polarization for 258 countries and areas for the period 1950–2021. These extensive series on lifespan distributions provide access to crucial information for researchers, practitioners, and the general public, thus contributing to a better understanding of health differences within and between nations.

Battery state of health estimation across electrochemistry and working conditions based on domain adaptation

Accurately assessing the health status of lithium-ion batteries is essential to ensure their safe and efficient application in electric vehicles and energy storage systems. Although various methods have been proposed to achieve battery state of health (SOH) estimation, most of them are only applicable to certain battery types or operating conditions. To address this issue, a novel method is proposed in this study, which leverages data-driven techniques and domain adaptation to cater to different battery electrochemistry and operating conditions. First, the evolution of battery aging is investigated and the incremental capacity sequence with ample aging information is extracted to indicate battery health. Then, the convolutional neural network and bidirectional long-short term memory network are combined to capture the nonlinear relationship between the input sequence and battery SOH. Next, a domain adaptation (DA) based on adversarial training is employed to enhance model adaptability by realizing domain-invariant features extraction. Furthermore, data augmentation is utilized to address data imbalance caused by significant lifespan disparity among different batteries. Finally, datasets with different battery types and aging conditions are used to verify the proposed method. The average estimation error of battery SOH can be controlled within 4.77 %, with over 30 % reduction contributed by the DA.

LSTM-Based Coherent Mortality Forecasting for Developing Countries

This paper studies a long short-term memory (LSTM)-based coherent mortality forecasting method for developing countries or regions. Many of such developing countries have experienced a rapid mortality decline over the past few decades. However, their recent mortality development trend is not necessarily driven by the same factors as their long-term behavior. Hence, we propose a time-varying mortality forecasting model based on the life expectancy and lifespan disparity gap between these developing countries and a selected benchmark group. Here, the mortality improvement trend for developing countries is expected to converge gradually to that of the benchmark group during the projection phase. More specifically, we use a unified deep neural network model with LSTM architecture to project the life expectancy and lifespan disparity difference, which further controls the rotation of the time-varying weight parameters in the model. This approach is applied to three developing countries and three developing regions. The empirical results show that this LSTM-based coherent forecasting method outperforms classical methods, especially for the long-term projections of mortality rates in developing countries.

Age-related flexibility of energetic metabolism in the honey bee Apis mellifera.

The mechanisms that underpin aging are still elusive. In this study, we suggest that the ability of mitochondria to oxidize different substrates, which is known as metabolic flexibility, is involved in this process. To verify our hypothesis, we used honey bees (Apis mellifera carnica) at different ages, to assess mitochondrial oxygen consumption and enzymatic activities of key enzymes of the energetic metabolism as well as ATP5A1 content (subunit of ATP synthase) and adenylic energy charge (AEC). We also measured mRNA abundance of genes involved in mitochondrial functions and the antioxidant system. Our results demonstrated that mitochondrial respiration increased with age and favored respiration through complexes I and II of the electron transport system (ETS) while glycerol-3-phosphate (G3P) oxidation was relatively decreased. In addition, glycolytic, tricarboxylic acid cycle and ETS enzymatic activities increased, which was associated with higher ATP5A1 content and AEC. Furthermore, we detected an early decrease in the mRNA abundance of subunits of NADH ubiquinone oxidoreductase subunit B2 (NDUFB2, complex I), mitochondrial cytochrome b (CYTB, complex III) of the ETS as well as superoxide dismutase 1 and a later decrease for vitellogenin, catalase and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COX1, complex IV). Thus, our study suggests that the energetic metabolism is optimized with aging in honey bees, mainly through quantitative and qualitative mitochondrial changes, rather than showing signs of senescence. Moreover, aging modulated metabolic flexibility, which might reflect an underpinning mechanism that explains lifespan disparities between the different castes of worker bees.

The gender gap in life expectancy and lifespan disparity as social risk indicators for international countries: A fuzzy clustering approach

The careful monitoring of longevity risk has a pivotal role in many fields such as the economy, demography, and social sciences. Despite the life expectancy at birth has increased steadily over the last century, it conceals gender-specific differences worldwide. Indeed, longevity risk varies according to gender-specific risk, where, a single-risk-factor effect differs from different lifestyles. This can create problems for life insurers, pension plans and social security schemes that provide benefits linked to people’s illness, death or survival. This study considers gender differences in longevity heterogeneity in 32 international countries with the aim of identifying homogeneous groups of countries. To do this, we conduct a longitudinal analysis over the period 1990–2015 using the Dynamic Time Warping-based Fuzzy C-Medoids, and two cross-sectional analyses, one for the first year of the series (1990) and one for the last (2015), using the Fuzzy C-Medoids. We analyze longevity patterns with the double lens of lifespan disparity and life expectancy gender gap. The analyses allow us to highlight the characteristics of the countries considered and their trends according to their longevity dynamics, taking into account gender-related risk differences.

Signatures of Extreme Longevity: A Perspective from Bivalve Molecular Evolution.

Among Metazoa, bivalves have the highest lifespan disparity, ranging from 1 to 500+ years, making them an exceptional testing ground to understand mechanisms underlying aging and the evolution of extended longevity. Nevertheless, comparative molecular evolution has been an overlooked approach in this instance. Here, we leveraged transcriptomic resources spanning 30 bivalve species to unravel the signatures of convergent molecular evolution in four long-lived species: Margaritifera margaritifera, Elliptio complanata, Lampsilis siliquoidea, and Arctica islandica (the latter represents the longest-lived noncolonial metazoan known so far). We applied a comprehensive approach-which included inference of convergent dN/dS, convergent positive selection, and convergent amino acid substitution-with a strong focus on the reduction of false positives. Genes with convergent evolution in long-lived bivalves show more physical and functional interactions to each other than expected, suggesting that they are biologically connected; this interaction network is enriched in genes for which a role in longevity has been experimentally supported in other species. This suggests that genes in the network are involved in extended longevity in bivalves and, consequently, that the mechanisms underlying extended longevity are-at least partially-shared across Metazoa. Although we believe that an integration of different genes and pathways is required for the extended longevity phenotype, we highlight the potential central roles of genes involved in cell proliferation control, translational machinery, and response to hypoxia, in lifespan extension.

Assessing premature mortality: an indicator selection analysis using data from Republic of Moldova, Czechia, and Switzerland

Premature mortality is a highly intricate concept, and despite its extensive exploration in specialized literature, a universally agreed-upon definition remains elusive. This study seeks to compare two distinct models of premature mortality analysis in order to determine the more appropriate approach within the national context. The relevance of this study is underscored by the observed mortality rates in Moldova, particularly the concern surrounding adult male mortality. To achieve this objective, a comparison was conducted involving the following indicators: the proportion of deaths before a specific age threshold, Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL), disparity in lifespans, and age thresholds derived from lifespan disparity. The analysis primarily adopts a comparative approach, and as such, data from Czechia and Sweden were employed for this purpose. In the context of Moldova, identifying a universally accepted set of indicators to effectively monitor premature mortality proves to be a complex task. Conventional indicators are susceptible to variations caused by age and population structure. The application of standardization methods can mitigate the impact of these factors. Alternatively, the "dynamic" approach indicators are less influenced by age and population structure, yet their methodology is more intricate, posing challenges for interpretation. Nonetheless, the establishment and promotion of such an indicator set are undeniably imperative. It is noteworthy that the selection of indicators for monitoring premature mortality is influenced by prevailing scientific or actuarial interests, as well as the specific goals outlined for the analysis.

Inequality in the Face of Death under Covid-19 in Ukraine

If there is a decline in mortality, it is mainly in younger age groups. As a result, more and more deaths are occurring in older age groups. In advanced societies, therefore, people are becoming “more equal in the face of death”. A sharp increase in mortality, such as that caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, affects different age groups of the population to different degrees. It is therefore relevant to study the change in inequality of life expectancy under the conditions of a sudden shock. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the inequality of lifespan variation in Ukraine in 2020—2021 and to compare it with countries with different levels of mortality. Previous studies of lifespan variation specifically devoted to Ukraine, or those that used data for Ukraine, were conducted or related to the pre-Covid period. The novelty of this work is the study of the behaviour of indicators characterising the inequality of lifespan before and during the two years of the epidemic, for which data are available. The demographic me t hod for constructing life tables and statistical methods for calculating lifespan variation indicators were used. Those are: Gini coefficient, average inter-individual difference in length of life, lifespan disparity, entropy of the life table, standard deviation of age at death, coefficient of variation. These indicators were calculated for the period 1989—2021 for Ukraine, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Japan, and England and Wales. It was confirmed that life expectancy is generally inversely related to inequality in the life table. It was found that this rule can be violated during mortality shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It is shown that male life expectancy and lifespan inequality in Ukraine decreased in 2020—2021. Average inter-individual difference in length of life and lifespan disparity have decreased by 6.6—6.9 %. On the other hand, almost all indicators of inequality for women have increased. The life expectancy elasticity indicator (entropy of the life table) turned out to be the most sensitive, increasing to 4.9 %. At the same time, it is interesting to note that the standard deviation of age at death for women in Ukraine decreased by 1.8 %. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected inequality depending on sex and the country’s pre-Covid level. Inequality indicators in Japan have hardly changed. Inequality rates rose in Spain and Sweden before returning to their previous downward trend. Available data for England and Wales suggest a continued slow trend towards greater inequality.

State-Level Trends in Lifespan Variability in the United States, 1960–2019: A Research Note

State-level disparities in life expectancy are wide, persistent, and potentially growing in the United States. However, the extent to which differences in lifespan variability by state have changed over time is unclear. This research note describes trends in lifespan variability for the United States overall and by state from 1960 to 2019 using period life table data from the United States Mortality Database. Lifespan disparity at birth (e0†) decreased over time in the United States overall from 14.0 years in 1960-1964 to 12.2 in 2015-2019. Lifespan variability decreased in all states, but states differed in the level and pace with which these changes occurred. Southern states and the District of Columbia exhibited consistently higher (i.e., less equitable) levels of lifespan variability than the nation overall. Conversely, lifespan variability was lower among several states in the Northeast (e.g., Connecticut and Massachusetts), Upper Midwest (e.g., Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), and West (e.g., California, Oregon, Utah, and Washington). We observe a particularly worrisome trend of increasing lifespan variability for the United States overall and for most states from 2010-2014 to 2015-2019. Monitoring state-level trends in lifespan variability has the potential to inform policies designed to ameliorate population health disparities.

Slowing down or returning to normal? Life expectancy improvements in Britain compared to five large European countries before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Life expectancy is an important summary measure of population health. In the absence of a significant event like war or disease outbreak, trends should, and historically have, increase over time, albeit with some fluctuations. Data were extracted from the human mortality database for life expectancy at birth and age 65 years from 1980 to the latest available year for England & Wales, Scotland (Great Britain), France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. It is well established that life expectancy improvements in Great Britain have stalled in recent years, and that a similar stalling was seen in other high-income countries during the mid-2010s. The significance and causes of the slowdown in improvement in life expectancy in Britain are disputed. First, was Britain's slowdown in progress in life expectancy in the 2010s a deviation 'from' earlier sustained improvements or simply returning to normal (slower) improvement rates following fastergains in the 2000s? Second, did other European countries have slowdowns comparable to that in Britain? Life expectancy, as a summary measure, conceals inequalities. Other measures, such as lifespan disparity, complement it in understanding changing trends. While annual fluctuations in life expectancy are expected, continued stalls should raise concern. The three British nations examined were the only ones among these European countries to experience stalling of life expectancy gains in both sexes. While it is clear that Britain is making less progress in health than similar countries, more research is needed to explain why.

SEXUAL-DIMORPHISM IN HUMAN IMMUNE SYSTEM AGING

Abstract Differences in immune function and responses contribute to health- and life-span disparities between sexes. However, the role of sex in immune system aging is not well understood. Here, we characterize peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 172 healthy adults 22–93 years of age using ATAC-seq, RNA-seq and flow cytometry. These data reveal a shared epigenomic signature of aging including declining naïve T cells and increasing monocyte and cytotoxic cell functions. These changes are greater in magnitude in men and accompanied by a male-specific decline in B-cell-specific loci. Interestingly, genomic differences between sexes increase after age 65, with men having higher innate and pro-inflammatory activity and lower adaptive activity. In a separate cohort (n=39) we studied how older adults respond to two available pneumococcal vaccines: T-dependent Prevnar and T-independent Pneumovax. How older adults respond to these vaccines at the molecular and cellular level, and whether there are pre-vaccination predictors for vaccine responsiveness, is poorly understood. To address this, we characterized serum antibody responses and peripheral blood leukocyte composition using flow cytometry and transcriptional profiles using RNA-seq, in healthy older adults before and after vaccination. The vaccines induced comparable serological responses and increases in the number of ICOS+ T follicular helper cells. A shared plasmablast transcriptional signature (IGHG2, IGHA1, IGHA2) was induced by both vaccines ten days after vaccination, which is distinct from influenza vaccine responses. Importantly, the pre-vaccination (baseline) ratio of Th1/Th17 cells predicted responsiveness to Prevnar but not to Pneumovax. Interestingly, women had higher levels of Th1/Th17; and responded stronger to Prevnar compared to men. This study uncovered how older adults respond to different pneumococcal vaccines and demonstrated the significance of considering biological sex and the immune cell composition for precision vaccinology.

Urban–rural lifespan disparities and cause-deleted analysis: evidence from China

ObjectivesTo examine the length and dispersion level of lifespan for the subnational populations in China, identify the urban–rural gap and sex differences, and analyse the contribution made by causes of...

Sexual dimorphism, aging and immunity.

Health and lifespan disparities between sexes are dependent on the immune responses. Men and women have different life styles which determine the environment, nutritional requirements and their interactions with the sex hormones. Sexual dimorphism in innate and adaptive immunity determines responses to infections and other environmental factors regulating health and diseases. Sex hormones regulate immune responses through the expression of receptors which differ for female and male hormones. Estrogen receptors are expressed in brain, lymphoid tissue cells and many immune cells while androgen receptors are limited in expression. Genetic, epigenetic factors and X chromosome linked immune function genes are important in enhanced adaptive immunity in females, leading to production of higher levels of antibodies compared to males. Different nutritional requirements and hormonal control of the mucosal microbiome and its function regulate mucosal immunity. Hormonal changes during various aspects of life and during aging control immune senescence. Evolutionarily, females have an advantage during young age when they are protected from infections by heightened immune reactivity though during aging that can lead to pathologies. Considering the sexual dimorphism in immunity, guidelines need to be established for sex-based treatments for optimal response.

The ratio of expansion to compression: A new measure of lifespan disparity.

Numerous studies have shown that high life expectancy is closely related to low life disparity. Unlike life expectancy, which can be increased by mortality decline at any age, life disparity can either increase or decrease in response to mortality decline. Disparity can thus be decomposed into two opposite components, called compression and expansion, depending on the effect of mortality decline on the age distribution of mortality. Without specifying the two components, various conventional measures of disparity may provide misleading information relating to how life chances in society can be equalized. Based on the relevant properties of changes in disparity, we develop a new measure of disparity-the ratio of expansion to compression-that can account for the relative importance of the two components. This simple measure not only provides a clear view of the evolution of disparity, but also permits changes in disparity related to mortality decline to be interpreted in a consistent manner similar to life expectancy. Simulations and an empirical analysis demonstrated the advantages of this new measure over conventional measures of disparity.

Black-white disparities during an epidemic: Life expectancy and lifespan disparity in the US, 1980–2000

Covid-19 has demonstrated again that epidemics can affect minorities more than the population in general. We consider one of the last major epidemics in the United States: HIV/AIDS from ca. 1980–2000. We calculate life expectancy and lifespan disparity (a measure of variance in age at death) for thirty US states, finding noticeable differences both between states and between the black and white communities. Lifespan disparity allows us to examine distributional effects, and, using decomposition methods, we find that for six states lifespan disparity for blacks increased between 1980 and 1990, while life expectancy increased less than for whites. We find that we can attribute most of this to the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Life expectancy and lifespan disparity forecasting: a long short-term memory approach

After the World War II, developed countries experienced a constant decline in mortality. As a result, life expectancy has never stopped increasing, despite an evident deceleration in developed countries, e.g. England, USA and Denmark. In this paper, we propose a new approach for forecasting life expectancy and lifespan disparity based on the recurrent neural networks with a long short-term memory. This type of neural network leads to predicting future values of longevity indexes while maintaining the significant influence of the past trend, but at the same time adequately reproducing the recent trend into forecasting. The model was applied to five countries for two fitting periods focusing on the forecasting life expectancy and lifespan disparity, both independently and simultaneously at birth and age 65. The results were compared to the projections obtained by four different models, namely, the Double Gap, ARIMA, CoDa and Lee-Carter in the independent case and the first-order Vector Autoregression model in the simultaneous case. Our predictions seem to be coherent with historical trends and biologically reasonable, providing a more accurate portrait of the future life expectancy and lifespan disparity.

Spatial patterns in regional life expectancy trends in the European Union between 1990 and 2018

Abstract Background A substantial life expectancy gap exists at the regional level in the European Union (EU). It has consistently followed an east-west pattern since 1990. The spatial pattern in the rate of change of regional life expectancy is less well established. Understanding both patterns is necessary to guide regional cohesion and health inequalities policy in the EU. Our aim was to investigate whether there are distinct spatial patterns in regional life expectancy trends in the EU since 1990. Methods Using Eurostat's regional life expectancy database, we constructed a panel of sex-specific period life expectancy at birth (PLE) for 201 EU NUTS2 regions between 1990 and 2018. Regions with populations less than a hundred thousand and with more than ten years of missing data were excluded. We clustered the regions based on the similarity of the shapes in PLE trends for each sex using a bootstrap version of the K-means algorithm. The optimal numbers of clusters were determined based on a majority of five empirical criteria. Finally, we used a bootstrap version of the join count test to assess the degree of the spatial association of the identified clusters. Results Preliminary results of clustering on PLE trends support a two-cluster model for women (high and moderate rate of PLE improvement) and a three-cluster model for men (very high, high, and moderate rate of PLE improvement). The clusters do not correspond to EU macro-regions or the year of EU accession. The female high rate and male very high rate of PLE improvement clusters overlap in northern Portugal, northern Italy, Finland, Poland, Czechia, Austria, the Budapest region, and Slovenia. The join count tests reject a random spatial patterning of clusters. Conclusions EU regional life expectancy trends since 1990 exhibit a spatial pattern that does not correspond to EU macro-regions or recent EU accession. Analysing spatial patterns in regional lifespan disparity trends would be an interesting next step. Key messages Subnational EU life expectancy trends exhibit a spatial pattern that undermines the prevailing east-west divide narrative as eastern European regions are among the best performing since 1990. National differences in health may not reflect the experience of European citizens in their regions. Subnational and dynamic perspectives are key for future health disparities research in the EU.

Untangling life span and body mass discrepancies in canids: phylogenetic comparison of oxidative stress in blood from domestic dogs and wild canids.

Canids are a morphological and physiological diverse group of animals, with the most diversity found within one species, the domestic dog. Underlying observed morphological differences, there must also be differences at other levels of organization that could lead to elucidating aging rates and life span disparities between wild and domestic canids. Furthermore, small-breed dogs live significantly longer lives than large-breed dogs, while having higher mass-specific metabolic rates and faster growth rates. At the cellular level, a clear mechanism underlying whole animal traits has not been fully elucidated, although oxidative stress has been implicated as a potential culprit of the disparate life spans of domestic dogs. We used plasma and red blood cells from known aged domestic dogs and wild canids, and measured several oxidative stress variables: total antioxidant capacity (TAC), lipid damage, and enzymatic activities of catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). We used phylogenetically informed general linear mixed models and nonphylogenetically corrected linear regression analysis. We found that lipid damage increases with age in domestic dogs, whereas TAC increases with age and TAC and GPx activity increases as a function of age/maximum life span in wild canids, which may partly explain longer potential life spans in wolves. As body mass increases, TAC and GPx activity increase in wild canids, but not domestic dogs, highlighting that artificial selection may have decreased antioxidant capacity in domestic dogs. We found that small-breed dogs have significantly higher circulating lipid damage compared with large-breed dogs, concomitant to their high mass-specific metabolism and higher growth rates, but in opposition to their long life spans.

Mortality Forecasting with the Lee-Carter Method: Adjusting for Smoothing and Lifespan Disparity.

Reliable mortality forecasts are an essential component of healthcare policies in ageing societies. The Lee-Carter method and its later variants are widely accepted probabilistic approaches to mortality forecasting, due to their simplicity and the straightforward interpretation of the model parameters. This model assumes an invariant age component and linear time component for forecasting. We apply the Lee-Carter method on smoothed mortality rates obtained by LASSO-type regularization and hence adjust the time component with the observed lifespan disparity. Smoothing with LASSO produces less error during the fitting period than do spline-based smoothing techniques. As a more informative indicator of longevity, matching with lifespan disparity makes the time component more reflective of mortality improvements. The forecasts produced by the new method were more accurate during out-of-sample evaluation and provided optimistic forecasts for many low-mortality countries.