Mathematical connection between short telomere induced senescence calculation and mortality rate data

Abstract

The last 20 years have seen a surge in scientific activity and promising results in the study of aging and longevity. Many researchers have focused on telomeres, which are composed of a series of TTAGGG repeat nucleotide sequences at the ends of each chromosome. Measurements of the length of these telomere strands show that they decrease in length with increasing age, leading many authors to propose that when the length of these telomere strands decreases sufficiently, the cells enter into a state of replicative senescence, eventually leading to disease and death. These ideas are supported by evidence that short telomere length is correlated with increased mortality. In this paper, we extend this idea to make an actual calculation of the predicted mortality rate caused by short telomere length induced senescence (STLIS). We derive a simple equation for the mathematical relationship between telomere length and mortality rate. Using only three parameters based on telomere length measurement data of Canadians, we have calculated both the magnitude and the age dependence of the mortality rate for both men and women. We show that these calculated data are in good quantitative agreement with the actual number of Canadians that die. This agreement demonstrates the quantitative correlation between the mortality calculated by the STLIS model and the mortality of the major diseases of aging (e.g., cardiovascular disease, many cancers and diabetes mellitus), which dominate human mortality. This result represents significant progress in our understanding of the factors behind the cause of aging.