The human life span has a natural limit and people are unlikely to live beyond about 115 years, new research suggests.
The US study found that while life expectancies have risen dramatically in the last century, the increase has been only minimal for the very old.
Their conclusions published in the journal Nature were made by analysing decades of data on human longevity.
Average life expectancy continues to increase and more people are reaching extreme old age. But, the researchers said, people who reach 110 today have no greater life expectancy than those who lived to 110 in the 1970s.
The age at death of the world’s oldest person has not increased since Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment died, aged 122, in 1997.
The trend since then has been for the world’s oldest person to reach about age 115, and the researchers predicted this would remain stable for the foreseeable future.
Life expectancy has been increasing since the 19th century because of vaccines, safer childbirth and tackling killers such as cancer and heart disease.
Infant and child mortality has fallen worldwide and life expectancies in developed countries now reach into the 70s and 80s.
“Despite any gains in the average life expectancy, there is a limit beyond which the maximum life span of humans cannot be extended,” said molecular geneticist Brandon Milholland of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who helped lead the study.
