ArticlePLoS biology2018
Errors as a primary cause of late-life mortality deceleration and plateaus.
Article in PLoS biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Strehler-Mildvan mortality correlation arises from changes in the variability of ageing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Red zones: the true color behind the myth of blue zones geographic longevity.Revista de salud publica (Bogota, Colombia) · 2025Article
- The global response to the pandemic: An empirical cluster analysis of policies targeting COVID-19.PloS one · 2025Article
- Identification of a "Blue Zone" in the Netherlands: A Genetic, Personal, Sociocultural, and Environmental Profile.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- Modelling the age distribution of longevity leaders.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- An underappreciated peculiarity of late-life human mortality kinetics assessed through the lens of a generalization of the Gompertz-Makeham law.Biogerontology · 2024Article
- Early-life physical performance predicts the aging and death of elite athletes.Science advances · 2023Article
- Article
- Why Gilgamesh failed: the mechanistic basis of the limits to human lifespan.Nature aging · 2022Review
- Medawar and Hamilton on the selective forces in the evolution of ageing.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- Social Inequality and the Future of U.S. Life Expectancy.Annual review of sociology · 2021Article
- Are We Approaching a Biological Limit to Human Longevity?The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2020Article
- The increasing lifespan variation gradient by area-level deprivation: A decomposition analysis of Scotland 1981-2011.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2019Article
- A universal transcriptomic signature of age reveals the temporal scaling of Caenorhabditis elegans aging trajectories.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Evidence That Jeanne Calment Died in 1934-Not 1997.Rejuvenation research · 2019Article
- Late-life mortality is underestimated because of data errors.PLoS biology · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
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Abstract
Several organisms, including humans, display a deceleration in mortality rates at advanced ages. This mortality deceleration is sufficiently rapid to allow late-life mortality to plateau in old age in several species, causing the apparent cessation of biological ageing. Here, it is shown that late-life mortality deceleration (LLMD) and late-life plateaus are caused by common demographic errors. Age estimation and cohort blending errors introduced at rates below 1 in 10,000 are sufficient to cause LLMD and plateaus. In humans, observed error rates of birth and death registration predict the magnitude of LLMD. Correction for these sources of demographic error using a mixed linear model eliminates LLMD and late-life mortality plateaus (LLMPs) without recourse to biological or evolutionary models. These results suggest models developed to explain LLMD have been fitted to an error distribution, that ageing does not slow or stop during old age in humans, and that there is a finite limit to human longevity.
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