Aging is accumulated damage, with age-related disease as the most visible dysfunction that results from that damage. Eventually one of those dysfunctions becomes large enough to cause death. The only way to live longer is to have a lower burden of damage, and thus exhibit lesser degrees of dysfunction. In human populations, this appears to be the case. The study noted here is one of a number to show that centenarians develop fewer and less severe age-related conditions than their peers who fail to live as long. The most interesting observation is that centenarians exhibit a relatively larger incidence of cancer as a fraction of all conditions. One might theorize that this is because their cells are undertaking a greater degree of maintenance activities in the age-damaged tissue environment. Cancer is a numbers game, and the more replication of cells taking place in tissues, particularly stem cells, the greater the odds of a cancer occurring.
Previous research suggests that centenarians reach exceptional ages primarily by avoiding major diseases rather than surviving them. However, how they manage multiple conditions over the life course remains less understood. We conducted a nationwide historical prospective study including all individuals born in Sweden between 1920 and 1922 (n = 274,108), tracking their health from age 70 for up to 30 years. Disease trajectories of centenarians were compared to those of shorter-lived peers using national health registers. We analysed disease burden, the rate of disease accumulation, and patterns of multimorbidity across age groups.
Centenarians had fewer diagnosed conditions and accumulated diseases at a slower rate than non-centenarians. Cardiovascular diseases were the most common diagnoses in all age groups, but contributed less to the overall disease burden among centenarians. In contrast, malignancies accounted for a relatively larger share of their disease profile. Neuropsychiatric conditions were consistently less common among centenarians, showing the largest relative difference across all ages. Centenarians also had fewer co-occurring diseases and were more likely to have conditions confined to a single disease group.
