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First Autopsy Study of an Okinawan Centenarian: Absence of Many Age-Related Diseases

¹ Department of Medicine, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire.
² Pacific Health Research Institute and the Department of Geriatrics, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.
³ Department of Internal Medicine, Chubu Hospital, Okinawa, Japan.
⁴ Department of Pathology, Chubu Hospital, Okinawa, Japan.
⁵ Okinawa Research Center for Longevity Science, Okinawa International University, Japan.
⁶ Okinawa Prefectural University, College of Nursing, Japan.
⁷ Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
⁸ Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Massachusetts.

Address correspondence to Bradley Willcox, MD, MSc, Pacific Health Research Institute, 846 South Hotel St., Suite 301, Honolulu, HI 96813. E-mail: bjwillcox{at}phrihawaii.org

Consistent with the compression-of-morbidity hypothesis, several studies have reported that a significant proportion of centenarians delay or escape age-related diseases. Of those who live with such diseases for a long time, many appear to do so with better functional status than do younger persons who do not achieve extreme old age. The authors describe the first autopsy in an Okinawan-Japanese centenarian who escaped many age-related illnesses and delayed frailty toward the end of her very long life. Her late-life morbidity pattern is contrasted with that of white centenarians.