Category Archives: Human Longevity

February 27, 2017 by Allison Mills Drosophila guttifera is another species Thomas Werner studies in his genetics lab. Credit: Thomas Werner

Pulling data from 180 different lines of fruit flies, researchers from Michigan Technological University compared resistance to a toxin found in mushrooms like the Death Cap and Destroying Angel. Their results were published by PLOS ONE this week.

The team's main finding is the genetic mechanisms that control the toxin resistance correspond to the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway that regulates cell physiology and metabolism in humans and other mammals. The findings could open up new possibilities for studying cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression and neurodegenerative diseases.

Alpha-amanitin Resistance

Not all fruit flies come into the kitchen on grocery store bananas; not all fruit flies like mushrooms. With a surprising amount of diversity, fruit fly species have adapted many niche preferences, such as a tolerance for alpha-amanitin, or alpha-amanitin, a toxin found in the Amanita genus of poisonous mushrooms.

Thomas Werner, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Michigan Tech, is the corresponding author of the new PLOS ONE paper, and the study builds on his previous work showing how alpha-amanitin resistance may be related to pesticide resistance in Asian fruit fly strains. Ever since, he and his team have worked on figuring out how fruit flies build resistance to the toxins and the resistance's effects on longevity.

"We found that there are multiple mechanisms that make sense," Werner says, explaining that the mechanisms focused on the genetic regulation of detoxification enzymes. "And the more resistant the fruit flies were, the longer they lived."

Initially, the team looked at a single, highly resistant strain of Drosophila melanogaster from Taiwan. Then they pulled in 180 lines of fruit flies collected at a Raleigh, North Carolina farmer's market for comparison. The crew relied on nearly 30 undergraduates to help do prep in the lab; eight are co-authors on the paper.

mTOR Pathway

Werner's team used genome-wide association mapping to help connect the dots between varying levels of fruit fly resistance. By putting big data techniques to work, they were able to screen genetic traits and nucleotide sequences to better discern candidate genes that control the toxin resistance.

"To do the analysis, we decide on a trait, which we will test in all 180 lines," Werner says. "We selected mushroom toxin resistance and found continuous variation in the lines."

From there, the data are sorted into two columns. Werner and his team then had to look for corresponding sequences of genetic codelike an elaborate children's matching game. The result: the matches kept pointing to the mTOR pathway, which is shared among mammals and insects.

"It's a central metabolic pathway that is very complicatedit's a key hub that is being widely researched right now," Werner says.

This initial connection to mTOR opens up many new lines of study, particularly in human health. Werner also says digging deeper into why fruit flies evolve this resistance could shed light on its advantage as a pre-adaptation device. A better understanding of the resistance's evolution mechanisms could offer insight into many diseases including cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression and neurodegenerative diseases.

Explore further: Fruit fly genetics reveal pesticide resistance and insight into cancer

More information: PLOS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173162

For being so small, fruit flies have had a large impact on genetic research. Thomas Werner, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, has bridged the miniscule and the massive in ...

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Matching up fruit flies, mushroom toxins and human health - Phys.Org

Science Daily

Average life expectancy set to increase by 2030 Science Daily Scientists once thought an average life expectancy of over 90 was impossible, explained Professor Majid Ezzati, lead researcher from the School of Public Health at Imperial: "We repeatedly hear that improvements in human longevity are about to come to ... Average Life Expectancy Is Expected to Pass 90 for the First Time EverScienceAlert Average life expectancy on the rise but the US lags behindNew Atlas Life expectancy will jump over the next two decades in much of the world but not the USNational Post all 35 news articles »

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Average life expectancy set to increase by 2030 - Science Daily

Patterns of protein synthesis associated with increased longevity discovered Science Daily The study, which appears in the journal Cell Reports, could help identify new therapeutic targets for potential interventions for human diseases associated with old age, such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders and cardiovascular ...

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Patterns of protein synthesis associated with increased longevity discovered - Science Daily

February 21, 2017 Credit: Peter Griffin/public domain

Average life expectancy is set to increase in many countries by 2030and will exceed 90 years in South Korea, according to new research.

The study, led by scientists from Imperial College London in collaboration with the World Health Organization, analysed long-term data on mortality and longevity trends to predict how life expectancy will change in 35 industrialised countries by 2030.

Nations in the study included both high-income countries, such as the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and emerging economies such as Poland, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

The study, published in The Lancet and funded by the UK Medical Research Council, revealed all nations in the study can expect to see an increase in life expectancy by 2030.

The results also found that South Koreans may have the highest life expectancy in the world in 2030.

The team calculated life expectancy at birth, and predicted a baby girl born in South Korea in 2030 will expect to live 90.8 years. Life expectancy at birth for South Korean men will be 84.1 years.

The researchers also calculated how long a 65-year-old person may expect to live in 2030. The results revealed that the average 65-year-old woman in South Korea in 2030 may live an additional 27.5 years.

Scientists once thought an average life expectancy of over 90 was impossible, explained Professor Majid Ezzati, lead researcher from the School of Public Health at Imperial: "We repeatedly hear that improvements in human longevity are about to come to an end. Many people used to believe that 90 years is the upper limit for life expectancy, but this research suggests we will break the 90-year-barrier. I don't believe we're anywhere near the upper limit of life expectancy -if there even is one."

Professor Ezzati explained that South Korea's high life expectancy may be due to a number of factors including good nutrition in childhood, low blood pressure, low levels of smoking, good access to healthcare, and uptake of new medical knowledge and technologies.

French women and Swiss men were predicted to have the highest life expectancies at birth in Europe in 2030, with an average life expectancy of 88.6 years for French women and nearly 84 years for Swiss men.

The results also revealed that the USA is likely to have the lowest life expectancy at birth in 2030 among high-income countries. The nation's average life expectancy at birth of men and women in 2030 (79.5 years and 83.3 years), will be similar to that of middle-income countries like Croatia and Mexico. The research team say this may be due to a number of factors including a lack of universal healthcare, as well as the highest child and maternal mortality rate, homicide rate and obesity among high-income countries.

The UK's average life expectancy at birth for women will be 85.3 years in 2030. This places them at 21st in the table of 35 countries. The average life expectancy of a UK man meanwhile will be 82.5 years in 2030. This places them at 14th in the table of 35 countries.

The team also predicted a 65-year-old UK man in 2030 could expect to live an additional 20.9 years (12th in the table of countries), while a 65-year-old woman in the UK could expect to live an additional 22.7 years, up (22nd in the table of countries).

The research also suggested the gap in life expectancy between women and men is closing.

Professor Ezzati explained: "Men traditionally had unhealthier lifestyles, and so shorter life expectancies. They smoked and drank more, and had more road traffic accidents and homicides. However as lifestyles become more similar between men and women, so does their longevity."

Along with the US, other countries who may see only small increases in life expectancy by 2030 included Japan, Sweden and Greece, while Macedonia and Serbia were projected to have the lowest life expectancies at birth for women and men respectively in 2030.

Life expectancy is calculated by assessing the age at which people die across the whole population. For instance if a country has high childhood mortality rate, this will make average national life expectancy much lower, as would a country in which many young people die in injuries and violence.

Professor Colin Mathers, co-author from the World Health Organization explained: "The increase in average life expectancy in high income countries is due to the over-65s living longer than ever before. In middle-income countries, the number of premature deaths - i.e. people dying in their forties and fifties, will also decline by 2030."

The team developed a new method to predict longevity, similar to the methods used for weather forecasting, which takes into account numerous different models for forecasting mortality and life expectancy. All the predictions in the study come with some uncertainty range. For instance, there is a 90 per cent probability that life expectancy for South Korean women in 2030 will be higher than 86.7 years, and a 57 per cent probability that it will be higher than 90 years.

The researchers chose the 35 industrialised countries in the study as they all had reliable data on deaths since at least 1985. The team then used this data, together with their new methodology to predict life expectancy to 2030.

Professor Ezzati added that these results suggest we need to be thinking carefully about the needs of an ageing population: "The fact that we will continue to live longer means we need to think about strengthening the health and social care systems to support an ageing population with multiple health needs. This is the opposite of what is being done in the era of austerity. We also need to think about whether current pension systems will support us, or if we need to consider working into later life."

Other findings from the research include:

Explore further: A country's level of education correlates well with life expectancy at birth

Journal reference: The Lancet

Provided by: Imperial College London

The level of education in a given country correlates well with life expectancy at birth, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning. The researchers suggest that educating the ...

In the first Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 paper, published in The Lancet, the authors present new estimates of life expectancy for the last four decades in 187 different countries. While overall life expectancy is ...

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Average life expectancy is set to increase in many countries by 2030and will exceed 90 years in South Korea, according to new research.

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Average life expectancy is set to increase in many countries by 2030 - Medical Xpress

If the measure of a good life is counted in years, the future looks bright, as the average life expectancy in many nations is set to climb.

A recent study has crunched the numbers on 35 industrialised countries from around the globe, and found their future populations will be living longer than today's in South Korea's case, potentially climbing as high as 90.

Statistically speaking, life expectancy is a measure of how long a newborn can be assumed to live.

Many things can affect this number as individuals face risks posed by diet; lifestyle habits such as smoking or drug use; infant mortality; access to healthcare; and traffic accidents.

A team led by scientists from Imperial College London working with the World Health Organisation ran data from a variety of countries through 21 different forecasting models, using the results to predict the life expectancy of citizens born in the year 2030.

The news is good for most of the countries, with life expectancy continuing to jump in leaps and bounds.

It will come as no surprise to most that women born in 2030 will more than likely live to a slightly older age than men, a trend which appears to be the reversal of how things were before the modern age.

Oddly, we're still not entirely sure whyfemales seem to outlive men across the board,though the study notes numbers seem to indicate the differences between the sexes come down to higher rates of accidents and differences in habits that lead to conditions such as cardiovascular disease.

Researcher Majid Ezzati explained, "Men traditionally had unhealthier lifestyles, and so shorter life expectancies. They smoked and drank more, and had more road traffic accidents and homicides. However as lifestyles become more similar between men and women, so does their longevity."

Women born in South Korea in the next 15 years might want to invest in birthday candles, with a 57 percent chance that their life expectancy will be 90.8 years, breaking the nonagenarian line for the first time in history.

Right now, that number for South Korean womenis 85.8, meaning a jump of five years.

French women can also expect a long life of 88.6 years, up from 85.1, followed by Japan at 88.4 years which barely moves from 88.5 years.

South Korean men, on the other hand, can expect a still-respectable 84.1 years in 2030 the highest predicted for males up from today's 79.3.

Good news for Australian blokes born in 2030 they will come in second on the list for men, also expecting to reach 84, just 3.6 years behind Australian women.

This general lift for life expectancy is largely attributed to socioeconomic improvements, better education, improved nutrition among children and adolescents, expanded access to healthcare, as well as factors such as a lower incidence of smoking among women.

While most of the countries studied can expect a significant boost in life expectancy over the next 15 years, the US will see only relatively minor improvements 82.1 to 83.3 for women born in 2030, and 77.5 to 79.5 for men,putting them on a similar level to life expectancies in Mexico and Croatia.

"Not only does the US have high and rising health inequalities, but also life expectancy has stagnated or even declined in some population subgroups," the researchers write.

Predicting a climb in life expectancy means looking to a future where society will need to care for an ageing population, especially in nations with a declining birth rate.

"The fact that we will continue to live longer means we need to think about strengthening the health and social care systems to support an ageing population with multiple health needs," says Ezzati.

Several decades ago, having a future general life expectancy exceeding the age of 85was believed to beunlikely.

The researchers themselves point out in their paper an early upper limit of 90 was proposed by some scientists at the beginning of the 20th century.

Should we even be thinking it terms of upper limits?

The current record for the oldest human is held by Jeanne Calment, a French woman who lived to 122 years and 164 days, but it seems unbelievable to think this could ever become a common statistic.

Ezzati doesn't seem to think so. "We repeatedly hear that improvements in human longevity are about to come to an end," he says. "I don't believe we're anywhere near the upper limit of life expectancy if there even is one."

This research was published in Lancet.

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Average Life Expectancy Is Expected to Pass 90 for the First Time Ever - ScienceAlert

A new study on longevity has found that by 2030, the average life expectancy for women in South Korea willsurpass 90 years(Credit: jackq/Depositphotos)

Drawing on long-term data on mortality and longevity, researchers from the Imperial College London and the World Health Organization (WHO) have predicted the average life expectancies for people in 35 countries born in 2030. Residents of every country in the study can expect to live longer, with South Korean women topping the list at 90 years but it's not such great news for the US.

The 35 countries in the study were chosen because they all had reliable mortality data dating back at least 30 years, and included high-income countries like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, as well as emerging economies like Poland, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Starting from that historical data, the researchers developed a new method for forecasting how those trends would continue into the future. The figure is calculated by looking at the age of death, by any cause, across a nation's entire population, meaning medical advances alone don't always account for improvements: for example, violence and accidents that take the lives of younger people can skew a country's average downwards.

Increases in life expectancy were seen across the board, but the average age of death and the rate of improvement varied by region. A baby girl born in South Korea in 2030, for example, could expect to live to the ripe old age of 90.8 years, while the average South Korean man should reach 84.1.

Australian and Swiss men born in 2030 can expect to hit 84, with Canada and the Netherlands trailing just slightly behind, at 83.9 and 83.7 respectively. After South Korea, French women should be the next longest-living at 88.6 years, followed closely by women in Japan at 88.4, Spain at 88.1 and Switzerland at 87.7 years.

"We repeatedly hear that improvements in human longevity are about to come to an end," says Majid Ezzati, lead researcher on the study. "Many people used to believe that 90 years is the upper limit for life expectancy, but this research suggests we will break the 90-year-barrier. I don't believe we're anywhere near the upper limit of life expectancy if there even is one." Interestingly, other studies have suggested that the upper limit could be 125 years.

The new research also found that in 2030, people over the age of 65 will generally live longer than people of the same age do today. A South Korean woman who turns 65 in 2030 should live another 27.5 years, with French women the same age living a further 26.1 years, and Japan, Spain and Switzerland following close behind. Men of that age in 2030 were longest-living in Canada (an extra 22.6 years), New Zealand (22.5), Australia (22.2), South Korea (22) and Ireland (21.7).

"The increase in average life expectancy in high income countries is due to the over-65s living longer than ever before," says Colin Mathers, co-author of the study. "In middle-income countries, the number of premature deaths i.e. people dying in their forties and fifties, will also decline by 2030."

So why have figures from the US been conspicuously absent so far? Unfortunately, the researchers point out that Americans born in 2030 are predicted to have the lowest life expectancy among developed countries 83.3 years for women and 79.5 for men. A lack of universal healthcare poses a problem, as does unusually high rates of child and maternal mortality, homicide and obesity.

"The fact that we will continue to live longer means we need to think about strengthening the health and social care systems to support an aging population with multiple health needs," says Ezzati. "This is the opposite of what is being done in the era of austerity. We also need to think about whether current pension systems will support us, or if we need to consider working into later life."

The research was published in The Lancet.

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Average life expectancy on the rise but the US lags behind - New Atlas

08:50 24 February 2017

Nick Conrad

Many of us could find ourselves emulating Hollywood star Kirk Douglas and living to be 100.

Archant

Living to 100 will soon become commonplace. But is that really such a good thing, asks Nick Conrad.

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Are you under 15? Well, according to a report published this week youre very likely to live past 100! According to the Bible, Methuselah lived to 969. It appears that the rest of humanity is slowly catching up.

Think this is good news? Read on, as I might be about to change your mind...

Im imagining my 100th birthday party. A dwindling number of family and friends appear, via Skype, at my virtual party. As I struggle to puff out my candles, I ponder on how much my hometown of Sheringham has changed. The year is 2084 - the A140 is a super-electric highway, the sea threatens to make North Norfolk an island due to coastal erosion, the Little Theatre has been redeveloped into a 5,000-capacity super arena. Im not jesting - think how much of the modern world the Victorians (a century before me) could have predicted?

Surely Im not the only one who believes in modern science. But inadvertently pursuing immortality is unhealthy. We obsess about quantity of life when surely we should be more concerned with quality. That said, the moral maze weve just wandered into has no easy exit. Our planet has limited resources. Could the phenomenal intelligence behind human life be about to engineer our ultimate demise? Forget nuclear warfare. Forget global warming. Could overcrowding trigger our species downfall?

The report cites improving diets and evolving medicines as the key reasons behind our predicted longevity. Scientists believe the average life expectancy will hit 90, a figure which once seemed impossible, by 2030. Academics used to believe there was an upper-limit to how long we could last. Weve repeatedly been told that improvements to human longevity have hit the limit, but in breaking this barrier, improving health and diets across the developing world, biologists now believe were nowhere near the limit of life expectancy.

In turn, we live longer in greater numbers. Combating food shortages, scarcity of resources and a need to reimagine an economy that allows for us to work for a greater proportion of life will be challenging. Despite NASA pursuits of a suitable exoplanet - a habitable world beyond our own solar system (theyve just found seven new ones) - it looks like we are stuck with our own Planet Earth.

The positives - I cant deny an increased average life span is a celebration of human achievement. It highlights our public healthcare successes. It brilliantly illustrates the wonderful strides our species has made, but it has consequences. We must put sustainable policies in place, building a society that were proud to grow old in - one that supports the elderly.

Lets not pretend we can alight this rollercoaster. Humans wont, cant and shouldnt stop advancing. How do we make sure the developing world doesnt become left behind? How do we ensure that swathes of the populace without wealth do not inadvertently become second-class citizens, unable to fund the extra years afforded to them? How do we ensure that the focus remains on future generations when the needs of the elderly become more pressing? How do we support public services, where do we go with pensions?

So back to 2084. My care home Skype party, my personal centenary, is in full swing. Yazoo and Spandau Ballet are long forgotten, nobody knows who Margaret Thatcher was and the iPhone is in the local museum. This crazy, new world I once imagined and which we all built, feels alien. The pace of change has just become too much.

Listeners to my BBC Radio Norfolk Breakfast Show often remark how they struggle with new technology. I do at times wonder if stubbornness is part of the problem - I guess I too will be grumbling about this modern world when my rose-tinted, nostalgic glasses slowly obscure my vision. You can transplant organs, you can administer innovative medicines but our brains remain the same. I love and embrace change but I doubt that will always be the case.

Though I can identify so many positives in the latest research, I do wonder if our ability to prolong life might ultimately be the undoing of humankind. Death, as much as life, is vital for the survival of all species.

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It's quality, not quantity, of life that matters - Norfolk Eastern Daily Press

Into the Cloud

As the cost of sequencing has dropped and adoption continues to grow, the move to cloud computing was almost a necessity for the most active sequencing operations. In testimony to the U.S. Congress in the summer of 2014, human genome pioneer J. Craig Venter cited two major developments that had allowed him to start his precision medicine company Human Longevity: the cost of sequencing passing an affordability threshold, and the ability to move the sequencing data it generated to the cloud.

We are going to rely very heavily on cloud computing, not only to house this massive database, but to be able to use it internationally, Venter testified regarding the then-fledgling company. He went on to describe how even with a dedicated, fiberoptic network the data moved so slowly between his company in La Jolla, CA, and his non-profit genomic research entity the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD, that they would routinely ship data on hard disks via FedEx between locations. The use of the cloud is the entire future of this field, he concluded.

Another significant factor speeding adoption of cloud computing comes when an organizations on-premises capability cant keep up with the speed and data demands of NGS, says David Shaywitz, M.D., Ph.D., CMO of cloud-based genome informatics and data management company DNAnexus. People would say to me we have an overwhelming amount of work to do and it shuts down our cluster when we try to do it. When they move to the cloud: what would be months of work for them before, they can do in the cloud in hours, so thats obviously better, Dr. Shaywitz says.

Further, because the hurdles to entry for NGS are now much lower, and dont require a significant IT backbone, the lower sequencing costs combined with cloud computing have democratized genomic research. You are putting the power of sequencing into single-researcher hands with things like [Illuminas desktop sequencer] MiSeq, says John Shon, VP, bioinformatics and data science at Illumina. So even though some of the work has to happen on premises, you can have push-button analysis in the cloud.

Thats a far cry from just a few years ago, notes Shon, whose background includes stints with Janssen (a division of Johnson & Johnson) and Roche. There were a lot of homegrown tools back then, almost exclusively local storage, and not very much was standardized at all, he says. In the research setting: the data would be collected in one place, youd have the molecular biology lab that did sample processing, youd have a sequencing center, and the data would be sent to the bioinformatics groups. So it was not uncommon to have five or six different departments involved in that process.

But the benefits of the cloud extend beyond more computing power and massive data storage, to providing an environment that fosters scientific collaboration on national and global scales. One example of how the cloud fosters collaborations is found in PrecisionFDA, the FDAs cloud-based collaborative portal that provides tools for researchers, including reference genomes, allows participating organizations to upload their own data and share tools and analytic methods for querying genomic data.

Launched in December 2015 as part of President Obamas Precision Medicine Initiative, PrecisionFDA to quickly grew to more than 1,500 researchers representing roughly 600 different companies and organizations. According to Taha Kass-Hout, M.D., FDA chief health information officer, roughly one-third of the participants in PrecisionFDA hail from outside the U.S. Its amazing to see how the global community is coming together, and they are contributing data, as well as software [to PrecisionFDA], Dr. Kass-Hout notes in a 2016 online interview outlining the program.

The community is working toward advancing the regulatory science behind assuring the accuracy of the next-gen software for the human genome. To do that, we want to provide an environment to share some of the innovations happening in this field, as well as any reference materials they might have, Dr. Kass-Hout explains. We also realized there are several members in the community that need the computation platform to help them do the heavy [data-]crunching. We consider it a social experiment behind advancing regulatory science behind NGS.

If you are looking for the opportunity to facilitate [collaboration] between distant facilitiesbecause science is global and there is a need for global representationthere is hardly a better way to do it than the cloud, Dr. Shaywitz concludes.

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Data Deluge - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (blog)

Predictive Genetic Testing And Consumer/Wellness Genomics ... Yahoo Finance NEW YORK, Feb. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The global predictive genetic testing & consumer/wellness genomics market is anticipated to reach USD 4.6 billion ... and more »

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A baby girl. The study found there is a 57% probability that life expectancy for a girl born in South Korea in 2030 will exceed 90 years. Photograph: Kiyoko Fukuda/Getty Images/amana images RF

Life expectancy will soon exceed 90 years for the first time, scientists have predicted, overturning all the assumptions about human longevity that prevailed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Women born in South Korea in 2030 are forecast to have a life expectancy of 90, a study has found. But other developed countries are not far behind, raising serious questions about the health and social care that will be needed by large numbers of the population living through their 80s.

The findings are from an international team of scientists funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the US Environmental Protection Agency, and come with caveats. It is impossible to accurately forecast the natural disasters, disease outbreaks or climate changes that may take a toll of lives around the world.

But the study in the Lancet medical journal shows a significant rise in life expectancy in most of the 35 developed countries studied. A notable exception is the US, where a combination of obesity, deaths of mothers and babies at birth, homicides and lack of equal access to healthcare is predicted to cause life expectancy to rise more slowly than in most comparable countries.

Boys born in 2030 in the US may expect to have similar lifespans to those in the Czech Republic, the study suggests, and girls will have life expectancy similar to those in Croatia and Mexico. Life expectancy for babies born in the US in 2030 is predicted to be 83.3 in 2030 for women and 79.5 for men, a small rise from the 2010 figures of 81.2 and 76.5 respectively.

The authors point out that the US is the only country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development without universal healthcare coverage. Not only does the US have high and rising health inequalities, but also life expectancy has stagnated or even declined in some population subgroups, write the authors.

The big winners are South Korea, some western European countries, and some emerging economies. France is second in the league table for women as it was in 2010 at 88.6 years, and Japan is third on 88.4 years after decades with the longest life expectancy in the world. Men born in 2030 are predicted to enjoy life expectancy of 84.1 years in South Korea and 84 years in Australia and Switzerland.

The UK is 21st in the league table for women, with a predicted life expectancy at birth in 2030 of 85.2 years, and 14th for men, whose life expectancy is predicted to be 82.5 years.

The study incorporates 21 different models of life expectancy to try to come to a definitive prediction of the future, but the authors say there is still uncertainty. There is a 97% probability that womens life expectancy at birth in 2030 in South Korea will be higher than 86.7 years and 57% probability that it will exceed 90 years.

South Koreas league-topping performance is due to improvements in its economy and education, say the authors. Deaths among children and adults from infectious diseases have dropped and nutrition has improved, which has also led to South Koreans growing taller. Obesity, which causes chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart problems and cancer, has not become a huge issue and fewer women smoke than in most western countries.

Other countries with high projected life expectancy such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have high-quality healthcare to prevent and treat cancer and heart disease, few infant deaths, and low smoking and road traffic injury rates, says the paper. In France and Switzerland, a lower proportion of women are overweight or obese.

Our increasing lifespan will require more attention to the health and social needs of elderly people, say the authors.

As recently as the turn of the century, many researchers believed that life expectancy would never surpass 90 years, said the lead author Prof Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London. Our predictions of increasing lifespans highlight our public health and healthcare successes.

However, it is important that policies to support the growing older population are in place. In particular, we will need to both strengthen our health and social care systems and to establish alternative models of care, such as technology assisted home care.

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Life expectancy forecast to exceed 90 years in coming decades - The Guardian