Healthy at the age of one Hundred is the new 80 today

Every second child living in a developed country in this century will reach the age of 100 years or more
The people in Germany are getting older. Scientists at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have investigated the question of whether increasing aging is associated with serious illnesses and whether, therefore, increasing life expectancy is even worthwhile. The researchers encountered interesting connections and explanations.

Are centenarians role models for healthy and successful aging? Or is particularly old age inextricably linked to increasing illness? Which diseases are more common in people who have reached 100 years of life and more? Scientists of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have followed up on how the course of disease in centenarians is at the end of life.

Hundred is the new 80th Why centenarians are often healthier in proportion than many younger people. (Image: kite_rin / fotolia.com)

It turned out that the number of diseases in people who died at the age of one hundred years and older was lower than those who died at the age of 90 to 99 years or 80 to 89 years. The full results of the study are published in the journal The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences *.

Forty years ago, only about one person in 10,000 reached the age of 100 or even more in industrialized nations. Nowadays, every second child living in a developed country in this century is believed to reach the age of 100 or more. Is high age but at the same time associated with increasing illnesses? There is evidence that centenarians suffer from a lower incidence of disease compared to younger cohorts of very old people. In dealing with aging societies, this is called the thesis of a compression of disease incidence, that is, the onset of age-associated diseases and disability is increasingly postponed to old age, so compressed.

"Our goal was also to better understand the evolution of the number of chronic diseases, called multimorbidity, and their end-of-life patterns in centenarians," explains Drs. Paul Gellert from the Institute of Medical Sociology and Rehabilitation Science of the Charité.

The researchers examined routine data from the Kranken- und Pflegekasse Knappschaft on diagnoses and health care for some 1,400 very old people within the six-year period prior to their death. For the analysis, they were divided into three groups. Those who died as centenarians were compared to random samples of individuals who died in their 80s or 90s. Home living and people in care facilities have been equally considered in the investigation.

In particular, those diseases that are usually associated with death during hospitalization, according to the Elixhauser morbidity index, were the most important factors in the evaluation. "In the quarter before death, people who died as centenarians averaged 3.3, compared to an average of 4.6 in those who died as octogenarians," Dr. Gellert together. "Our findings also show that the incidence of disease in the last few years before death was lower in the case of very old people, compared to those who died at 90 to 99 years or 80 to 89 years."

If the dementia and muscular skeletal disorders, which are common in old age, are included in the analysis, almost half of the deceased have five or more illnesses, whereby more than 60 percent of those who died at the age of 90 and 66 percent died at the same age Number of diseases is coming. While dementia and heart failure are more common in centenarians than in younger adults, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, renal insufficiency, and chronic diseases are less common in those who are one hundred years old. Musculoskeletal disorders are equally common in all groups. Old age and number of diseases are quite connected. The extent, however, must be considered differentiated.