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Centenarian Study Seeks Insight Into Aging Well

M. J. Friedrich

JAMA. 2002;288:2247-2253.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Boston—A mania for staving off the signs of aging permeates culture in the United States. Time robs people of health, independence, and perspicacity—or so advertisements warn—so everyone should cling to youth as long as possible.

But is this an accurate picture of aging? Researchers who study those who reach exceptional old age are finding that the inexorable march toward the end of life need not be a steady decline. In the last decade, investigators have been studying the growing number of people who celebrate their 100th birthday and have found that many centenarians remain hale and hearty well into their 90s, delaying the onset of age-related diseases and compressing the time they are ill into a short period at the end of their lives.

The New England Centenarian Study staff visiting with 101-year-old Volney Kavanaugh. (Study director Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, is at top left and . . . [Full Text of this Article]