Life expectancy forecast to exceed 90 years in coming decades

Life expectancy will soon exceed 90 years for the first time, scientists have predicted, overturning all the assumptions about human longevity that prevailed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Women born in South Korea in 2030 are forecast to have a life expectancy of 90, a study has found. But other developed countries are not far behind, raising serious questions about the health and social care that will be needed by large numbers of the population living through their 80s.

The findings are from an international team of scientists funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the US Environmental Protection Agency, and come with caveats. It is impossible to accurately forecast the natural disasters, disease outbreaks or climate changes that may take a toll of lives around the world.

But the study in the Lancet medical journal shows a significant rise in life expectancy in most of the 35 developed countries studied. A notable exception is the US, where a combination of obesity, deaths of mothers and babies at birth, homicides and lack of equal access to healthcare is predicted to cause life expectancy to rise more slowly than in most comparable countries.

Life expectancy graphic

Boys born in 2030 in the US may expect to have similar lifespans to those in the Czech Republic, the study suggests, and girls will have life expectancy similar to those in Croatia and Mexico. Life expectancy for babies born in the US in 2030 is predicted to be 83.3 in 2030 for women and 79.5 for men, a small rise from the 2010 figures of 81.2 and 76.5 respectively.

The authors point out that the US is the only country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development without universal healthcare coverage. “Not only does the US have high and rising health inequalities, but also life expectancy has stagnated or even declined in some population subgroups,” write the authors.

The big winners are South Korea, some western European countries, and some emerging economies. France is second in the league table for women – as it was in 2010 – at 88.6 years, and Japan is third on 88.4 years after decades with the longest life expectancy in the world. Men born in 2030 are predicted to enjoy life expectancy of 84.1 years in South Korea and 84 years in Australia and Switzerland.

The UK is 21st in the league table for women, with a predicted life expectancy at birth in 2030 of 85.2 years, and 14th for men, whose life expectancy is predicted to be 82.5 years.

The study incorporates 21 different models of life expectancy to try to come to a definitive prediction of the future, but the authors say there is still uncertainty. There is a 97% probability that women’s life expectancy at birth in 2030 in South Korea will be higher than 86.7 years and 57% probability that it will exceed 90 years.

South Korea’s league-topping performance is due to improvements in its economy and education, say the authors. Deaths among children and adults from infectious diseases have dropped and nutrition has improved, which has also led to South Koreans growing taller. Obesity, which causes chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart problems and cancer, has not become a huge issue and fewer women smoke than in most western countries.

Other countries with high projected life expectancy such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have high-quality healthcare to prevent and treat cancer and heart disease, few infant deaths, and low smoking and road traffic injury rates, says the paper. In France and Switzerland, a lower proportion of women are overweight or obese.

Our increasing lifespan will require more attention to the health and social needs of elderly people, say the authors.

“As recently as the turn of the century, many researchers believed that life expectancy would never surpass 90 years,” said the lead author Prof Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London. “Our predictions of increasing lifespans highlight our public health and healthcare successes.

“However, it is important that policies to support the growing older population are in place. In particular, we will need to both strengthen our health and social care systems and to establish alternative models of care, such as technology assisted home care.”

Life expectancy forecast to exceed 90 years in coming decades

Petrol cars allowed to exceed pollution limits by 50% under draft EU laws

New European cars with petrol engines will be allowed to overshoot a limit on toxic particulates emissions by 50% under a draft EU regulation backed by the UK and most other EU states.

Campaigners say that a simple €25 (£22) filter could drastically cut the pollution, but the Guardian has learned that car-makers have instead mounted a successful push for loopholes and legislative delay.

Bas Eickhout, a Green MEP on the European parliament’s environment committee and dieselgate inquiry panel, promised action to ensure that the lessons of the VW scandal were learned.

“With this ridiculous proposal, the EU’s member states are again trying to dilute EU laws at a terrible cost to human health. We will call on the European commission to come to the European parliament and explain themselves on this issue,” he said.

Particulate matter (PM) is the largest single contributor to the estimated 600,000 premature deaths across Europe from pollution-related heart and lung diseases each year. Children and the elderly are worst affected, and the associated health costs could be as high as €1.6tn a year in Europe, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although exhaust fumes from diesel and petrol engines are one of the largest sources of particulates emissions, most EU member states support raising the EU’s pollution standard 50% above the legal limit set down in the Euro 6 regulation. Behind the scenes, vehicle makers have pushed strongly for a staggering 300% over, according to material seen by the Guardian.

The draft regulation is still being discussed by EU member states and the auto industry has not given up hopes of wrenching further concessions on particulate emissions ahead of a final decision on 7 December.

One Powerpoint slide shown to EU expert groups by the European automobile manufacturers association (Acea) says that a 300% latitude in meeting the letter of the law would be “realistic” because of “measurement uncertainty” in emissions tests.

Florent Grelier, a clean vehicles engineer at the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, told the Guardian she feared that EU attempts to improve air quality were being “bent to the will of the automotive industry”.

“This is a petrolgate scandal in the making,” she said. “Unless the European commission and governments establish strict test procedures to protect the industry from its own short-sightedness, within a few years we will see continuing high levels of particles killing hundreds of thousands of citizens prematurely.”

Under EU law, car-manufacturers are already obliged to use filters for diesel engines, but not for the rapidly-growing 40% of the petrol engine market which is made up by uncontrolled gasoline direct injection engines. These release more particulate matter than modern diesel cars.

Gasoline particulate filters could reduce these emissions by a factor of around 100, and would cost manufacturers just €25 per car, according to research by T&E. But car manufacturers have argued this would violate the principle of technology neutrality.

A spokesman for Acea declined to comment on the issue.

Calls by the auto industry for a delay in implementing the new regulation have been well received by several car-producing EU countries. Spain and Sweden argued for a one-year legislative delay that would push its introduction back to 2019, in minutes of a technical committee meeting earlier this month seen by the Guardian.

The UK took no formal position on when the new regulation should enter into force but warned of “unintended adverse effects” if PM limits were given a separate starting date to standards for another pollutant, nitriogen oxide (NOx) , which will now begin in 2019.

An EU group of national experts – the technical committee on motor vehicles – is now expected to sign off on the final proposal to amend the Euro 6 regulation for real world driving emissions, in December.

The issue of “conformity factors” – or compensating for uncertainties in emissions tests – last year led the committee to impose a NOx limit 110% higher than the one written into the Euro 6 regulations last year.

Petrol cars allowed to exceed pollution limits by 50% under draft EU laws

United kingdom cities will exceed EU pollution limits right up until 2030, figures present

Air pollution levels in London, Birmingham, and Leeds will exceed European limits till at least 2030, newly-published figures display.

In a case at the European court of justice on Thursday lawyers for the commission described the UK’s failure to act on the breach as “maybe the longest operating infringement of EU law in historical past.”

The Uk has exceeded the EU’s nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution restrict considering that 2010, top the European commission and environmental lawyers to launch separate legal actions towards the government which faces potential fines of £300m a yr for its infraction.

On Wednesday, the government published revised and far more accurate projections for NO2 emissions, which display that it expects the Better London urban region, West Midlands urban location and West Yorkshire urban area will be in breach right up until “after 2030″, 5-10 years later on than previously expected.

NO2 is largely caused by diesel autos, and can aggravate current overall health troubles such as asthma. Research have begun to propose NO2 could have as wonderful an impact on early deaths as particulate pollution which have previously been linked to larger risks of lung cancer and heart failure. Air pollution triggers an estimated 29,000 deaths a 12 months in the Uk, in accordance to Public Overall health England.

Tyneside, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield and Bristol, all previously expected to be in compliance of NO2 amounts by 2015, will now not be compliant until finally 2025, in accordance to the revised figures, which take into account much more precise “functionality of present day diesel cars and older petrol vehicles”.

Alan Andrews, a attorney for ClientEarth which has brought a situation towards the United kingdom for the breach which was heard by the European court of justice, said: “It’s poor sufficient that the government has no intention of complying with these limits in the foreseeable future. It’s even worse that they are attempting to hide behind legal procedural principles to maintain this quiet. We have a appropriate to breathe clean air and the correct to know when the government is failing to safeguard us.

He extra: “Another five many years of delay indicates thousands much more people will die or be made critically ill. The Uk demands to act now to get deadly diesel autos out of our towns and cities.”

Barry Gardiner, shadow setting minister, explained: “Today’s response from the European court of justice exhibits that the government is failing to meet even its very own inadequate air pollution targets. Instead of implementing measures to minimize the ranges of pollution, the government lately had to scrap its very own air top quality approach due to the fact it would have produced the difficulty worse, and presently the government have no strategy.”

“Now the government’s only target is covering their back by passing fines for their very own failure to reduce air pollution on to regional authorities. With out urgent action young children in the Uk will be waiting for one more twenty years before they can expect any improvement.”

This week, air pollution specialists at King’s School in London stated that NO2 levels in London’s Oxford Street were the worst in the globe. A verdict on the ClientEarth situation is anticipated from the European court of justice towards the end of this yr.

United kingdom cities will exceed EU pollution limits right up until 2030, figures present

The Market place For DNA-Sequencing-Based Down"s Syndrome Exams Could Exceed $six Billion

On Wednesday evening the New England Journal of Medication published a research showing that a new, DNA-sequencing based blood test provides a dramatic improvement in accuracy at screening for Down’s syndrome and a 2nd, connected ailment. That could open up a $ 6 billion market to the biotechnology companies that are presently advertising these exams.

Each 12 months in the U.S. there are 6.six million pregnancies and 4 million births, in accordance the Centers for Ailment Management &amp Prevention. The record costs of the exams, which are sold by four distinct organizations, assortment from $ 700 to $ 2500. Assuming that pricing settles in the middle of that range and that there are 5 million women who select to have the test, that would be a $ eight billion marketplace.

But give that number a haircut. “I have to imagine pricing could come down much more aggressively if tips expanded,” says Douglas Schenkel, an analyst at Cowen &amp Co. Not each and every pregnant woman will ever get the check. But he still argues that the industry for these exams could increase six-fold from its present dimension of about $ one billion. Isaac Ro, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, supplied comparable estimates in a note to clientele.

Such a industry expansion could be critical to all of the companies that make the tests, such as Ariosa, which can make the lowest cost check, Natera, and Sequenom Sequenom. But the biggest winner could be Illumina, the San Diego maker of DNA sequencing gear that funded the trial and that obtained Verinata, a fourth maker of the new exams, for $ 350 million final year.

Illumina says it believes Verinata has strong intellectual home position in this booming new industry. Past that, however, all four producers run their exams on Illumina’s DNA sequencing machines, which means the firm wins no matter what. Francis DeSouza, Illumina’s president, stated in an interview that, if anything at all, he expects to commit significantly less on marketing Verinata and that the business is taking care for there to be an even playing field for the exams. It prices its check in the mid-range of the marketplace, at a $ one,500 checklist price tag.

Illumina also says that it does not anticipate a value war, since the market place expansion will be dependent on healthcare societies writing suggestions that endorse the new check. Right now the American University of Obstetricians and Gynecologists suggests the DNA-based mostly tests only for mothers at substantial danger, including people more than 35.

But the NEJM paper makes a strong argument for expanding that recommendation. Proper now it is suggested that all pregnant females be presented a pair of tests – a blood test and an ultrasound to search for fluid at the base of the fetus’ neck – to display for 3 issues induced when the infant has an further copy of 1 of the 46 chromosome bundles that incorporate the human genetic code. There are 3 this kind of issues that occur commonly: trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, is the most common, creating diminished intellectual ability and slower development trisomies 18 and 13 are less typical, but are often fatal for the infant.

Present screening exams yield a huge variety of false positives, so they have to be followed up with an invasive test that samples cells from the fetus. One such check, chorionic villus sampling, has a miscarriage price of 1 in 200 the other, amniocentesis, causes miscarriages one out of every single 600 instances.

These invasive exams would nevertheless be essential to verify positives from the DNA exams, but they’d be utilised in ladies whose fetuses really do not have Down’s or other trisomies far less typically. The NEJM examine gave the old screening exams and the new DNA-based mostly test to 1,914 pregnant women and followed them right up until the baby was born. For Down Syndrome, the new test gave just six false positives compared to 69 for the previous screening exams. For trisomy 13, there had been 3 false positives with DNA sequencing in contrast to eleven with the classic number. For trisomy 13, the numbers were 1 and 6.

Assuming five million women are tested each and every year, that would indicate 245,000 would be spared an invasive check, and 358 miscarriages may possibly be prevented. Even at a larger expense, that could be tough for insurance coverage companies to say no to. Some professionals, which includes Illumina, assume that more studies will be needed to modify the recommendations.

How does the new check perform? Basically, by counting. Because some of the fetus’ cells circulate in the mother’s blood, researchers can sequence DNA and see if genes from any chromosomes appear also typically. For a much more complete description, examine out the video embedded from Steve Quake at Stanford, who co-invented Verinata’s technological innovation. His explanation commences at five:fifty five.

Not everyone is positive that the new technological innovation, recognized as non-invasive prenatal testing, is an unmixed blessing. Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford Law College who has written extensively on genetic concerns, says that the new test is “more reason to think NIPT will largely take more than Down’s screening.” But he warns that these very same approaches may possibly lead to exams for far more difficult tests. “If, say, 70% of American pregnancies obtained broad genetic screening, the up coming generation would look diverse – some will say for better, some for worse.”

The Market place For DNA-Sequencing-Based Down"s Syndrome Exams Could Exceed $six Billion