Chicago

In the year 2000, it was predicted that the person who will live for more than 150 years had already been born. That bold assertion came from confidence that medical advancements in the 20th century would lead to increase in life expectancy.

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But that's changing, with a new analysis showing that there is a major slowdown in life expectancy improvements in last three decades.

The study published in Nature journal analysed death data from the longest-living populations in the world to reach this concluson.

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Life expectancy had gone up by around 30 years in the 20th century in high-income countries, thanks to improved public health access and medical innovations.

But the study said that in the 21st century, only five per cent of males and 15 per cent of females born in areas with high life expectency would reach 100 years.

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"Since 1990, improvements overall in life expectancy have decelerated," said the study, adding that, unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, "radical human life extension is implausible in this century."

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Led by Jay Olshansky, the researchers analysed data from countries like Japan, Australia, and several European nations, specifically in areas known longevity.

The study into death data of 1990 to 2019 from nine of these areas found that life expectancy increased by just 6.5 years in this period.

There was a decline in improvements since 1990, with life expectancy actually falling in tthe US.

The way of achieveing better life expectancy is through breakthroughs in anti-ageing therapies, and new medicines that address bilogical processes as opposed to teaching age-related diseases, said the study authors.

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Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago warned that people should not assume they will live to 100.

“If you’re planning for retirement, it’s probably not a good idea to assume you’re going to make it to 100,” Olshansky was quoted as saying in The Guardian.

“You’d probably have to work for at least 10 years longer than you’d think. And you want to enjoy the last phase of your life, you don’t necessarily want to spend it working to save for time you’re not going to experience,” he said.

(With inputs from agencies)