Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, Vol 55, Issue 1 B10-B19, Copyright © 2000 by The Gerontological Society of America
Vitality index in survival modeling: how physiological aging influences mortality
SM Zuev, AI Yashin, KG Manton, E Dowd, IB Pogojev and RN Usmanov
Institute of Numerical Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
We investigated the relation of the age trajectory of physiological
indicators of the average metabolic activity of organisms in a population
to the age-specific population mortality rate. We show that a metabolic
rate indicator (MRI) can be estimated using traditional physiological
measures, such as homeostatic serum glucose concentration, vital capacity,
and such. Estimates of the MRI were made from data collected in the
Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT) study. The relation of the
empirical mortality rate and MRI was also tested using MRFIT data. The age
trajectory of MRI was evaluated using Swedish mortality data. The mortality
results reproduce the "Strehler and Mildvan effect." The average rate of
decline of MRI with age coincides with estimates predicted by Strehler
using other methods. Possible extensions of the method are discussed.
